


Pounded in the Anal Region by the Norwegian Legion

by onnenlintu



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: M/M, character exploration, chuck tingle is good at titling things and we should follow his example more often, exploration in the sense one might explore a cave, how the fingers on the monkey's paw curl!, journey of self-discovery, people complained about there not being enough porn in this fandom, the things being explored are not motivations or quirks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-08 02:19:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15920902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onnenlintu/pseuds/onnenlintu
Summary: When Emil needs to get over his attraction to his best friend, he decides to follow some oft-repeated advice. A summer working in Dalsnes, with its famously strapping population of soldiers, provides the ideal venue. Mostly a rather lowbrow comedy that happens to have piles of smut in it.





	1. Move On

**Author's Note:**

> I originally floated the "plot" of this fic to a couple of people as a joke, but so many people asked me to actually write it that I thought it was worth obliging them, so I wrote it over the course of about five days immediately after losing my job. Reviews from beta readers have included "I laughed very hard, many times, but now I'm done I never want to hear any kind of epithet for a penis ever again" and "this inspired me to go suck a dick for the first time, thank you Emil for providing a relatable example of being awkward but still powering through". Dedicated to everyone who has complained to me about there not being enough smut. You know who you are.

Emil felt terrible.

Objectively, he knew things were far from bad. As hard as it still was to believe sometimes, he'd made it back from the Silent World, and being on his way to Norway to work for the mentor he'd become so dearly fond of was one of the best turns his life could be taking after that. Sigrun had promised a summer that would be both educational and fun, mostly in the sense of military training and hunting adventures, but also with a bit of rowdy nudging about how well-built the men of Norway were. Emil had awkwardly shoved off the elbowing and smirks, proclaiming that he was already perfectly well equipped to pull his weight as a hunter and pretending not to be going a bit pink at her other remarks.

The train to the coast was so warm. Despite spring’s residual chill being almost entirely gone from the air by now, they hadn't started turning off the heat on public transport yet. The sweat on Emil's palms made the piece of paper in his hand a bit damp. Still, he didn't want to let go of it. On it was written a date for just over a month in the future in stark, regular handwriting. Lalli had pressed it into Emil's hand before they parted, curling his fingers around it for him in a gentle, firm gesture that even by itself would have left Emil uselessly compromised for the rest of the day.

The way Lalli had reached out and tidied Emil’s fringe for him before pronouncing a halting, whispery "Soon, I come Norway. Remember." had been too much. Luckily, before Emil had needed to get going, he'd had time to shove his face into a pillow and wail in despair at how pathetic he was getting. Dealing with this intense a crush, coupled with the keen awareness of how bad he was at doing so, was a horrible double-whammy of shame and regret.

Lalli couldn't know. Him finding out would be the worst possible outcome. The way Lalli had hesitated, holding his breath for a moment, the first time he'd learned and applied the word friend to Emil out loud had been heartbreaking. Emil gathered Lalli wasn't used to having friends, and who knew how he'd feel if it turned out there was something else there he wasn't used to? Every time Emil tried to picture the potential outcome of bringing this up, the feeling of being a terrible friend to Lalli only intensified. As hopelessly attracted as he was, anything that would make Lalli feel uncomfortable was the last thing he wanted.

Things were going to change, though. Emil had a plan. Sigrun's blunt innuendos had placed an idea in his head, one he'd been vaguely entertaining since he admitted to himself how bad the problem with Lalli was, but that he'd not yet had any opportunity to act on. He'd heard the phrase "get over someone by getting under someone" many times in his life, and the fact it was so often repeated surely meant it must be sound advice. In Mora, people knew him, and even despite the capital's size the chance of running into someone that remembered his more embarrassing stages well was far too high. On the Dalsnes military base, though, he had a fresh start. Nobody would know how much of an awkward virgin he was, and it would be the best chance he'd ever had to find enough people to make that advice work.

Surely, at nineteen-nearly-twenty, he was old enough to get a handle on his emotions. He felt like by now, he should have the control of a grown man. Emil resolved that it was time to make some decisions that befitted his age. He was going to get over Lalli enough to be a good friend to him, ideally before they even met again - and if he had to fuck every man in Scandinavia for that to happen, then so be it.


	2. Arrival

When Emil arrived in Norway, he barely had time to put down his bag before Sigrun found him and clapped him on the back so hard it knocked the wind out of him. Based on the force with which she pulled him into a position that was half hug and half headlock, Emil assumed she meant it when she followed her knuckling of the top of his head with “So glad you made it over!”. Apparently the day she’d told him to arrive wasn’t pure convenience, because there was going to be drinking tonight. “Hope you can hold your beer as well as you hold a flamethrower.” The implicit compliment was exactly what Emil needed to perk him up a little after the long journey. While he’d never been invited to a huge amount of parties, if any of the mentions of him here so far had been Sigrun talking about him like that, maybe impressing this new group of people wouldn’t be as intimidating as usual.

There was something comfortingly homelike about the terrain here. Dalsnes itself was surprisingly flat, but the base he would apparently be living and training in was a little further out than the town, deeper into the hills. While it wasn’t among the more epic mountains that people who’d visited Norway often described, it was definitely enough that Emil saw why Sigrun had found Denmark so soulless. He tried not to spend too much time staring at what scenery protruded over the walls, finding a space in one of the six-person bunks as quickly as possible and dumping his bag on it without ceremony. The look of them was very much in line with the Swedish sensibilities he was used to, all light-coloured wood and functionally minimalist in that way he’d always found a little disappointing, but couldn’t deny was easy to get right. The only other person in there was a lanky man on one of the top bunks who appeared to be taking a nap with his jacket over his face, lifting his cover just a little as he heard the sound of Emil’s bag hitting his mattress. Noting Emil’s presence with a monosyllabic noise, he declined to offer greeting or comment before closing his eyes again and letting the jacket fall back down.

There was no clock in here, and Emil had no kind of timepiece on him, so he hurried out just in case it was already getting on to the time Sigrun had said people were meant to meet. Apparently they started the drinking early here. When Emil had remarked on people not even waiting for sunset, Sigrun had shrugged and told him “this way, everyone still has a chance to be up in time tomorrow morning”, before following it with “not that I expect either of us to leave early, because we’re not wimps”. Emil wondered exactly how much endurance he was expected to have. He hadn’t mentioned that he’d been drunk only a handful of times in his life, and that for a generous definition of drunk that included moments of tipsiness at Yule and getting into the cooking wine as a toddler. Still, he’d handled everything Sigrun had dragged him into so far. When he found her again, it wasn’t quite time, but following her around while she merrily rounded people up was at least a staggered introduction to the crowd. Nobody seemed to think he was ridiculous yet. This was fine.  
  
In the bustle of arriving, Emil had almost forgotten what he’d spent the entire journey here thinking about. The first man to introduce himself brought the thoughts back in a way that was quite deeply unfortunate. While in some ways he looked nothing like Lalli - his hair was jet black and his skin a light brown - the slender forearms, mid-length straight hair and slightly angled face were reminiscent of him enough to make Emil immediately think of what he’d left behind in Sweden. “Einar. So you are also here from abroad.”

Still distracted, Emil shook Einar’s offered hand. “Emil! Ah, and yes! You’re not Swedish, though, are you? Wait, you’re - Icelandic?” Emil had heard very few Icelanders speaking anything but Icelandic, but guessed that must be the kind of “from abroad” he was. He certainly wasn’t speaking Danish or Swedish, and in a small blessing definitely didn’t sound Finnish.

“Indeed. I know, it’s a shock that some of us can learn languages.” The drollness was another slightly Lalli-esque thing that prodded at the bruise-tender spot in Emil’s chest. As Einar moved on to greeting someone else - seemingly another Icelander working here, by his language switch as he did so - Emil shot a glance around at the rest of the gathered crowd. Although the thought still mildly terrified him, there would be no better time than tonight to start enacting his grand plan. He was sure that “start as you mean to go on” was what Sigrun would have advised, and well, he was here to learn from her. She hadn’t been wrong, either, about the strapping builds of a rather high proportion of Norwegian men. Although Emil was trying not to stare too much yet, he had definitely already noticed that hunting trolls in the hills seemed to be a great way to build up one’s arm muscles. Most of the people in this crowd, men and women both, could probably have thrown Emil.

The lighting of the mead-hall was slightly dim, and Emil’s haze of overthinking was soon overtaken by the physical haze of a musty hall, the scents of wood-smoke and hops combining with the sweat of dozens of warriors. People were committing very rapidly to the task of getting drunk, opening kegs even before they’d started the food. Sigrun found Emil again and pressed a drink into his hand. “Are you drunk yet? No? Gods, I gave you one job!”

Looking around, Emil gave up on trying to work out where exactly the food was coming from. He did indeed have only one job tonight. “Hah, well, I’ll get right on it!”


	3. Should I Laugh Or Cry

“So - ah - Didrik.” Emil leaned against the broad shoulders of the man whose lap he’d found, fingers moving in an awkward grope against the firm muscles of his chest. He wasn’t entirely sure at what point he’d sat down here, and had needed to ask the man’s name embarrassingly long after starting to use him as a chair, but he was very okay with the situation as it was. It was a good thing Emil’s trousers were on the thicker side, because it turned out that sitting in someone’s lap and having that someone’s hand wander up his shirt was enough by itself to get him much harder than he had ever wanted to be in public. Sigrun had wandered by some ten minutes before, looking like she was about to press Emil into a conversation or more drinking, but on noticing the situation had just mouthed “get in” and given a mortifyingly obvious grin and thumbs-up before retreating.  
  
“Mm-hmm.” Didrik steadied Emil as he wobbled a bit. He seemed pretty steamed himself.  
  
“Do you - uh.” Emil wasn’t sure how people usually phrased this question. So far, he thought he’d put on a reasonable act of someone who did this all the time, competently and all, and was getting increasingly desperate not to break the illusion. “Do you um - so, there’s a lot of people sleeping in each dorm here - where do people go if they uh - ”  
  
“Mine’s not that many people.” The hand up Emil’s shirt moved a little higher, reaching around his ribcage to brush against a nipple and making him squirm. “And everyone in there stays out a while when this happens. They probably won’t be back for a couple of hours.”  
  
“Oh.” Having apparently gotten his meaning across, Emil wasn’t sure what to do next. He leaned a little harder into Didrik’s torso, petting the beard his hands found as they climbed his chest. Emil was briefly distracted by the feel of it, wondering why he couldn’t grow a beard like that, before returning to the topic. “Do you want to - uh - show me your - your room?”  
  
Even as drunk as he was, Emil was a little grossed out by the force of beer breath covering his face when Didrik leaned towards his ear and whispered “I’ll show you all _sorts_ of things.” Still, the directness made him gulp and wonder again how obvious his erection would be when he stood up. At least he wasn’t going to have a problem going through with this. The casual strength with which he’d been steadied on this man’s lap had him feeling extremely warm and runny, even more so than the heat of the mead-hall and the plentiful booze had already done by itself.  
  
Standing up was going to have to happen, if he was going to see this man’s… room. Emil wobbled to his feet, feeling another rush of noticing how drunk he was as the sudden movement made him dizzy. Navigating the tables wasn’t a challenge, though, so he’d clearly sobered up a little from the state he’d been in around midnight. He had no idea what time it was now, but it was late. Taking the initiative, he headed towards the door, glancing back to see his new acquaintance following behind him.  
  
Out in the cold, Emil became even more conscious of the fact that he was definitely more sober than he’d been three hours ago. At least Didrik, emerging into the night air, seemed to be concurring as he blinked and shook his head. Emil felt a bubble of panic in his guts as for the first time, he wondered if the other man had any kind of detailed plan for what they were about to do. He’d long wondered if he would struggle to actually go through with it in the event of ever getting laid, and that lingering fear was no less potent for the act seeming imminent. Pushing down the swirling anxiety, Emil followed Didrik through the narrow walkways between the bunk buildings, pausing when he turned so they were face-to-face again.  
  
Being pressed against the wall near someone’s door was a slight surprise. The oscillating feeling of being both quite drunk and quite sober slipped closer to the first state, and Emil tried to wrap his mind and face around his first experience of this kind of open-mouth, tongue-battering kissing. Emil couldn’t work out if he liked it, but his body answered the question for him when Didrik’s hands returned up his shirt, this time not holding back from rolling rough-padded thumbs across his nipples and pinching his flesh. Didrik must have felt how quickly Emil was getting hard, because one hand came down again to palm at him through his clothes, making him gasp much louder than he felt like people were meant to.  
  
Maybe that much noise was what people usually did, because Didrik seemed to like it, dragging Emil off the wall and starting to lead him on with more speed. He at least hadn’t lied about his dorm still being empty, and with the closed door leaving them in near-blackness, Emil felt a tiny bit of his courage returning. He needed it, because apparently they weren’t going to be messing around. He barely had time to remove his shoes before he was grabbed again.  
  
“Ow!” Emil’s hip thudded against the corner of what was probably a table, and then he was being pressed up against that table, backing onto it as hands returned to part his legs and grope his thighs. Didrik’s tongue on his neck felt so hot and sticky. When it worked on the delicate skin near his shoulders, Emil once again felt his cock tightening and his belly tingling, the mild head rush of gasping this often starting to make him feel outside himself. Finally reciprocating the grabbing, Emil ran his hands up under Didrik’s shirt and found his belly and chest to be lightly covered in hair. “Mm.” Emil’s appreciative noises were again taken as encouragement, and Didrik once again put his mouth to Emil’s ear to ask a question.    
  
“You like sucking cock?” The way his hips were being gripped made Emil feel like Didrik was hoping for a yes.  
  
“I, ah.” The anxiety digging its way through Emil’s torso seemed to grow sharper claws. Didrik had been so proactive so far, saving Emil from revealing himself to be as hopeless as he was, but if he had to show any kind of skill now he’d surely ruin everything. “Why don’t you just - just fuck me already?”  
  
The moment the phrase was out of his mouth, Emil wondered what on earth he had been thinking. On the one hand, he’d been putting things up his own butt since he was fourteen, many of them bigger than anyone’s penis. While there were not that many activities Emil was totally confident about, fitting approximately penis-sized objects inside himself did happen to be one of them. On the other hand, he was extremely sure there would be something unrecoverably embarrassing about how he acted when it happened. His stomach’s threats to crawl out his mouth were getting more and more insistent, and Didrik was pulling back, and now he was looking for a light - finding a light - starting to search near his bed. Emil blinked at the darkness clearing and tried not to hyperventilate as he wondered if his butt was actually in any state to do this. He was pretty sure that he’d be ready, if he was doing it to himself, but the thought occurred to him that he had no idea what other people’s standards were regarding those things.  
  
He could do this. Didrik returning and setting the bottle down on the table next to Emil was a little confusing, because he was sure this would be more comfortable on one of the bunks. The explanation came with Didrik’s next question. “You like getting bent over tables?”  
  
“Uh - ” Emil felt like his confidence must have been very obviously fake when he steadied his voice and said “Oh, oh yeah.” The feeling of someone else undressing him was first a bit weird, then so oddly enjoyable Emil had to again try not to squirm too much. He hadn’t expected the fumbling motion of someone else’s hands on his buttons and zippers to be something he enjoyed. The bloom of sensation when a hand finally pulled his cock out of his pants, then his pants down his thighs, made Emil dizzy with a mix of anxiety and anticipation. He guessed he was meant to be doing this, too, and pulling Didrik’s shirt off revealed enough muscle and hair that Emil was very glad the light had been turned on.  
  
With the shirt gone, Emil could see the outline of Didrik’s cock against the cloth of his trousers. The moment he clapped eyes on it, he felt his desire to do this finally overtake the intense nerves he had been fighting down since he left the mead-hall. The urge to get his hands on it was overwhelming. Emil was once again made to contend with his lingering drunkenness as his fingers slipped into the waistband and popped off a button. After an awkward moment of pulling on a stuck zipper, he felt his heart leap as he reached into Didrik’s pants, finally for the first time getting to feel the hard shaft of another man’s cock.

It felt so hot in his palm, slightly tacky with sweat, rigid and already oozing at the tip when Emil pulled it out. Emil realised that if he had been brave enough, he absolutely would have wanted to lick it, suck on its juicy head and feel the texture of that veiny shaft on his lips. He settled for sitting wide-eyed and massaging the head of it, drawing the foreskin to the tip and back down just as he would with his own, his head feeling light again as he was rewarded with a satisfied grunt and a hand lacing into his hair.  
  
The keen awareness that he was sitting naked on some near-stranger’s table, said stranger’s cock in hand and rock hard himself, was still terrifying but also oddly thrilling. When the groping started again, Emil finally let himself relax into it a little, biting his lip as Didrik pulled at his hair and started to manhandle him onto his front. He needed to be less tense, but being pressed face-down onto the table didn’t make that easy, nor did the sound of a cap coming off. Didrik’s hands were on Emil’s hips again, first massaging one butt cheek, then making Emil whine as a finger nudged between them. It was cold and slick and still clumsy, slipping into Emil before his brain could fully catch up with the fact this was really happening, but it slid in so easily Emil decided dealing with more preamble would be worse than just going for it.  
  
“Just - just get enough lube on yourself, I’ll be fine, why don't you uh." What did people say at this point? "Hey, fuck me now.” Judging by the noise Emil heard behind him, his awful phrasing wasn’t the dealbreaker he’d always assumed it would be. Didrik seemed extremely keen on not needing to wait, and despite the flicker of confidence Emil had just felt, his mouth went dry at the sound of oil hitting cock and being vigorously rubbed up and down it. Once again, he told himself that he’d be fine if he relaxed, steadying his breath and closing his eyes as the tip of it nudged against his hole.  
  
Of course he whimpered like that when it slid in. Emil’s face flushed and his fingers scrabbled against the table, finding nothing to grip. Didrik’s fingers grabbing Emil’s hair again only made his whining louder, and the other hand grabbing a buttock and firmly squeezing as the fucking finally started sent Emil briefly limp as a rag doll. Emil could feel the stretch, slightly too much too soon, but it was nowhere near enough of a problem for him to want it to stop. It felt so big when someone else was doing it and not holding back with how hard, and as Emil's body adjusted to it he felt himself shiver with enjoyment. Emil's expression, squirming with his face smushed into the table, must have been ridiculous. Hearing grunts of obvious pleasure behind him made him giddy with relief that he’d gotten this right somehow, and hearing the rough-voiced mutters that he felt good was even more satisfying than getting fucked in the first place. His own cock still throbbing, Emil fumbled trying to get a hand under himself, starting to jerk himself off and openly moaning as Didrik picked up the pace of his thrusts.  
  
Emil couldn’t tell if losing himself in the rhythm was what made it seem short, or if this was just how long sex was meant to last. Either way, being pounded over a table while he jerked himself off brought Emil to the edge very quickly, and he tried to slow himself down, gripping his shaft and gritting his teeth as he felt the pressure become nearly overwhelming. The table had started to shift with how forcefully he was being fucked, and the grunting behind him had turned into fast, shallow breathing. Emil clapped his hand over his mouth, trying to stifle the loud noises that were coming out of him, then felt the fingers gripping his hips dig in as Didrik’s grunting reached a crescendo. Realising that the long gasps and sudden pulsing were a load being shot into him made Emil stop breathing for a moment, his face feeling very warm again as he started frantically pulling at his cock to catch up.  
  
It wasn’t anywhere near the best orgasm Emil had ever had. The fact Didrik had already stopped and pulled out by the time he had a chance to finish himself off was kind of anticlimactic, and scrabbling to stop himself getting cum on someone’s table was not a good kind of distracting. Still, when it was all over, Emil felt some relief mixed in with the disappointment. He felt ridiculous lying face down on the table, legs hanging off the side and on his tiptoes, but at least Didrik taking a moment to pet his hair didn’t seem like what someone would do if they’d been totally let down by an incompetent virgin. Incompetent recently-ex-virgin, Emil supposed.  
  
“Would be a bit more comfortable now if we’d done that on the bed.” Didrik sounded satisfied, despite his complaint. With the post-orgasmic droop now hitting him, Emil felt a small flicker of shame about the fact that this was the longest and most sober sentence he’d yet heard from this man.  
  
“Mm.” Emil was so keenly aware that he had no idea what you meant to say in this situation. _Thanks for plowing me over that table, it was okay?_  
  
“You can’t stay here, by the way.”  
  
“Oh! I, I know.”  
  
“That was fun.” Didrik was already standing up, letting out the grunt of someone who’d just finished an afternoon of physical work, and wandering around. Wiping off his cock and putting it back in his pants, he seemed much more together than Emil, who remained more or less sprawled naked over the table.  
  
“Mm-hmm.” Emil had just resolved to himself to keep this brief and do both of them the favour of leaving soon, when the doorknob clicked and the door swung open to reveal Didrik’s bunkmates returning. Light from the walkways spilled in, backlighting the heads of the two men who entered first. Emil did not need to be told how naked he was, but the cold air coming in and hitting his entirely exposed skin reminded him anyway. He felt his well-quantified mental ranking of every bad first impression he'd ever made warp all at once beyond recognition, as this bum-first introduction left all the others as very distant runners-up.  
  
“Oh! Didrik, there you are! And who is this?”  
  
Emil wondered if Didrik gesturing at him to introduce himself was because he thought he should get the chance to make his own impression, or just not being totally sure what his name was. “Hi! Emil! I’m uh, new here, from Sweden! I came here on the boat, this morning, I...” The flow of useless extra information thankfully died off before Emil could say anything too desperately weird, but the intense mortification totally choking his thought processes made that more due to chance than intention. Picking up his pants in a daze, he pulled them on, finding his shirt under the table - had he left his jacket in the mead-hall? - and tugging that over his head as well before squeezing past the small group of men out the door with a brief and squeaky “Bye!”.  
  
Only once they’d all entered their bunk and closed the door did he realise both that he’d left his shoes in there and that he had no idea where he was. Knocking, waiting for the door to open, retrieving the shoes and asking if anyone knew which direction to walk in for number 34 felt like quite possibly the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to him. Having acquired his directions from the near-monosyllabic men inside, Emil set off towards his own bed, feeling the start of a hangover prickling at the edge of his rather abrupt sobriety. The residual stickiness of lube in his butt crack and tingling sense of having been stretched out were not pleasant now, and Emil could see the beginnings of dawn silhouetting the tops of the distant hills. This early on a spring morning, with his jacket missing, Emil found the breeze uncomfortably cold.  
  
Entering his own bunk and kicking off his shoes, Emil realised that he never actually made the bed he was meant to be sleeping in tonight. The exhaustion of a long journey and an eventful night made it absolutely not worth trying to find bedsheets now. Emil decided to move his bag slightly to the side and spoon it rather than bothering to find a place to put it. This had the welcome side effect of having something to shove his face in while he groaned in despair at how quickly he’d managed to fuck this up. Getting a glass of water in the dark was definitely too hard. He would take however many hours of sleep he had left, then deal with both his dehydration and probable new reputation in the morning. At least passing out was easy.


	4. Disillusion

Sigrun’s voice was so loud. Emil knew this about her, and had known it for months, but had still somehow failed to register how much worse it would make his hangover until it started happening. The way she projected when she took roll-call for the morning’s hunting trip made Emil feel like any trolls waiting in the hills were getting specific advance notification of every person that was coming.   
  
“Abadi! Dyrdal! Henriksen!”   
  
Emil’s attention drifted for a bit as she worked her way through the names, being quite used to his family name being on the latter end of the alphabet.   
  
“Larsen! Mohamed! Nygård! Ohlin!”   
  
At least Emil wasn’t the only one who looked a bit worse for wear. He might be the only one still viscerally conscious of this new feeling of morning-after tenderness, though. It wasn’t tenderness in the sense of anything hurting, besides the parts behind his eyes that only hangovers ever made him aware of. He just felt a bit fragile, in general, and the creeping conviction that absolutely everybody in this camp knew how he’d been walked in on last night wasn’t helping even a little bit.   
  
“Västerström!”   
  
“Here.” Emil said it only just loudly enough to be heard. The last few names were read off, and Sigrun kept up her volume as she laid out today’s route for everyone to hear. This wasn’t going to be anything like the longest day here, but it might prove to be an intense one. Emil had done much more dangerous things with Sigrun while more sleep-deprived, though. In a way, he really looked forward to the total distraction from his self-inflicted problems this morning was sure to be.   
  
The spring gusts still carried a little of the sea’s chill, and the shade of the trees took the sting out of the sun’s brightness. Walking up into the hills was actually a pretty good hangover cure. Emil remembered that one of the few times he’d been invited to drink with others in the Swedish military, he’d managed to annoy enough people that he’d been sent out to shovel all the snow the next morning, and ended up actually grateful for it when exercise in the freezing cold managed to clear his head much faster than lying on the floor would have. Perhaps that experience, and the reminder served by the brisk breeze against his sore head today, were meant to be instructive at times like this. He could still hear Sigrun’s voice carrying as she directed the horde of soldiers into deeper terrain, and knowing he was very much on her territory was some kind of reassurance. Sigrun would definitely be using this kind of day as a chance to let off steam and clear her head after a mishap. Taking her example would, as usual, not hurt.   
  
When Emil managed to make good use of his flamethrower during the first group take-down of a giant, he felt like he was definitely channeling that good example. Others rushed in on the pile of smouldering flesh he’d left behind, destroying remaining heads with hatchets and rifle butts, then clapping him on the back with whoops of violent joy. Returning immediately to the fight with them was some kind of antidote to his feeling that everyone thought he was a total embarrassment already. With his body full of enough adrenaline to make the sleep deprivation fade into the background and his lungs full of enough fresh wilderness air to cure his hangover, the morning and early afternoon passed with surprising speed. Emil could see why Sigrun liked this version of what she’d taught him to do, the mood being totally different with a group this well-equipped, and the knowledge that they could go home to relative safety making the fight far less harrowing.   
  
During the walk home, downhill and towards things like dinner and showers, Emil barely thought at all about how miserable he’d been that morning. The few kilometers home passed quickly in the company of people who seemed to find him not only tolerable, but useful. It seemed more and more likely they hadn’t all already heard about him being a total mess. This good mood was totally ruined when, passing through the walls of the base, Emil saw Didrik half-asleep at a guard shift on the walls. Thankfully, the way he was practically nodding off there made him oblivious to Emil’s presence, but it was impossible now not to start once again mentally reliving what had happened the night before.   
  
Despite how awful he’d felt on his walk of shame in the early hours, and despite feeling increasingly slighted when he thought about abruptly he’d been kicked out, Emil still hadn’t stopped thinking about that moment of having someone’s cock close to his face and immediately feeling the intense desire to lick it. Conversely, despite the fact he was still kind of pleased with himself for finally going out and getting some, there was the fact he still had no idea who most of those people who’d seen him naked and streaked with jizz were. The prickling awkwardness of knowing they could all be talking about him was still enough to bring his head back down again, and apparently it was noticeable, because as everyone headed towards the showers Sigrun pulled him aside for a moment.   
  
“Hey, little Viking! You ready to come for a walk?” While her tone was still unwaveringly chipper, she’d dropped the near-monotonal shout that she communicated with in battle, and sounded more like the person who was Emil's friend as well as his captain.   
  
Emil followed her, knowing he didn’t even really need to answer. Sigrun’s pep talks rarely required much input from his side. He could probably predict almost perfectly what was coming.   
  
“You look a bit down, buddy! Rough time with the new crowd?”   
  
“Oh, uh, you could say that.” Emil had no idea how to start explaining the level of rough he’d felt during his early morning walk of shame. Did Sigrun even understand the concept of a walk of shame? Maybe when she did it, it was more like a stride of pride. Emil really couldn’t picture her retreating from someone’s room the way he had last night.   
  
“You seemed to be making friends last night.” Sigrun went there without a shred of hesitancy.   
  
“Mmm.”   
  
“And today! Making yourself useful as usual.”   
  
Emil was grateful she’d quickly segued into more familiar conversational territory. “Thanks.”   
  
“Really, I think you already know pretty much everything you need to for this summer.” Sigrun was still leading Emil on a big circle of the camp, giving herself enough time to tell him everything that was on her mind. “After all, you can only watch the best for so long without picking up a thing or two - ”   
  
Sigrun’s little soliloquy on the topic of killing trolls was nothing Emil hadn’t heard before. Not letting setbacks throw you. Fear being nothing but sometimes a useful alarm bell, and sometimes a thing you needed to let happen before diving in anyway. Not being afraid to throw yourself into what you were doing, and enthusiastic commitment to the task going a long way. Remembering that someone on this base had total faith in Emil’s ability to finish the job when things were in a tight place was very reassuring, and when he thought about some of the lessons he’d learned from Sigrun’s seemingly anxiety-proof personality, Emil started to feel like maybe having had a poor introduction here wasn’t the worst.   
  
The two of them were back where they’d started, and Sigrun looked at the sun for a moment before announcing that it was getting late. She was going to deal with going to dinner stinking rather than miss the good stuff.   
  
“Thanks, Sigrun.” Emil truly appreciated her taking the time to pep him up when she could have been stuffing her face.   
  
“Don’t worry about it!” Sigrun thumped him on the shoulders, and Emil managed to brace himself well enough to barely stagger. “Hit the showers, maybe I’ll see you again at dinner.”   



	5. As Good As New

Finally entering the showers, Emil thought at first that they were completely empty. The vast majority of the group had long passed through, and it took him a moment to notice the sound of a lone showerhead working somewhere in the small network of rooms. Stripping off his battered clothes, Emil wandered through and found that the only room with actual showers in it was the partially occupied one, its final remaining occupant a long-haired man who seemed to be taking almost as much time over that hair as Emil did his. He looked familiar somehow, but not quite in the same way that almost everyone on this smallish base already looked a little familiar. Emil had definitely interacted with this guy already in some way, but could not for the life of him place the context. Anyway, he had been in enough public showers in his life to know how to use one without actually interacting with other people.    
  
Emil didn’t really want to also miss out on most of the dinner pickings, so for once he tried to keep his bathroom time to a minimum, leaving only a moment after the other guy did. In the dressing room, the feeling of having something to say to him only grew when they ended up towelling off in silence next to each other. Contemplating the auburn hair falling across the man’s freckled, lean-muscled back, Emil started to think that maybe they’d had some kind of extended conversation when he was drunk.  
  
“Hey. Did we meet yesterday? Sorry if I was a mess.” Emil was so bad at keeping a casual tone during that kind of apology.  
  
“Oh, wow, you do not need to be the one apologising.” The way the man jerked around made it obvious all at once that he’d been feeling horribly awkward himself. “Uh, I don’t know how much you remember, but I really thought you were into it when I was getting like that, I’m sorry I got my wires crossed there - “  
  
Emil now recalled with abrupt clarity exactly why he remembered having met this guy the night before. “Oh! No, actually you were fine! I pushed you off me because I needed to go and uh… throw up, just a little.”  
  
“Oh! Right!”  
  
Seeing this guy clearly feel terrible about something he hadn’t actually done made Emil, in turn, feel guilty about not ever clearing it up. “Really, I was having fun!” As keen as he was to clear the air, this was a conversation Emil really wished he could have had when he was much, much drunker.  
  
Admitting he’d actually been into this guy’s manhandling by the beer keg was awkward enough by itself, but even more so when Emil remembered the two of them were alone together and already half-naked. However, he couldn’t stop his mind drifting in a certain optimistic direction, given the circumstances and how the memories of last night were still so fresh. Recalling how he’d felt about the touch of an engorged cock’s silky skin against his hand, Emil again felt the stirring of his newly stoked desire to put his mouth on one.  
  
Sigrun was right. Sometimes, you had to be scared but do it anyway. “In fact, if you’re still interested, you know.” Emil was still mostly addressing his feet. This wasn’t a thing you were meant to suggest to people in public bathrooms. He’d committed now, though. Peering out from under his own wet fringe, he saw that the other man was eyeing his naked torso with nervous appreciation. Turning to face him, Emil tried to lean in a way that might be appealing, putting on his best attempt at fake confidence. “I don’t think anyone else is coming through here soon.”  
  
“No.” The lip-biting surely meant this guy really liked what he saw here. “I think we have a - a while.” He was stepping closer. Oh, this was really happening. Emil gulped and hoped he had the capacity to do this sober.  
  
This guy didn’t kiss as aggressively as Didrik had. Although Emil did feel a flash of embarrassment as he remembered he had no idea what this guy’s name was, the feeling of his naked chest against another man’s naked chest was as instant a rush as getting in someone’s lap had been last night. His mouth being gently probed by a tongue, then hands sliding down the curve of his back, left Emil once again getting hard very rapidly.  
  
The man seemed a little surprised when sliding his hands down the back of Emil’s pants elicited a sharp gasp. If the towel around his waist hadn’t been starting to be very obviously propped out by a growing erection, it might have tipped the balance over into Emil being embarrassed enough to call this off. The promise of this man’s cock was not something Emil was going to walk away from, though. The heat of it jutting against his belly was irresistibly enticing. When Emil reached down and gripped it, it was the other man’s turn to gasp.  
  
Emil let himself be pulled down onto the bench below them, and took the chance to straddle him and keep fondling him through the towel. Asking his name now would definitely be weird, so instead, Emil again put on his best impression of confidence and asked him “So… do you like getting your cock sucked?”  
  
“Holy shit.” The hand on Emil’s butt squeezed tight as the man once again seemed rather surprised. “I mean, wow. I guess it is true what they say about the Swedish.”  
  
Wait, what? “Uh… yes.” Emil assumed he was meant to know what this guy was talking about. He made a mental note to ask Sigrun later, and kept massaging the towel-covered cock in his hand, wondering if that last statement had been a yes or a no. The man spreading his thighs a little and running his fingers through Emil’s hair seemed like a signal, and when Emil started clambering down to get between his legs, the man removed the flimsy cover of his towel with a sharp, anticipatory intake of breath.  
  
For the second time in as many days, Emil had another man’s cock in his face. Taking the shaft in his hand, he became overpoweringly aware of how taut his own erection was, straining against his pants with uncomfortable tightness. He still had no idea how to go about this, but the idea of tasting cock was making him throb with such wild anticipation there was no way he wasn’t going to try. The other man’s breath speeding up when Emil experimentally stroked his shaft was more than enough encouragement, and he leaned his head down before slapping his tongue against the base and drawing it all the way up. The head was so silky he had to take the time to slide it between his lips. Entranced by the feel of it, Emil’s world shrank down to the throbbing in his pants and the hot, hard tanginess on his tongue. The owner of this delicious cock was taking a deep, shuddering breath, and Emil wanted nothing more in life than to draw out more like that.  
  
Sucking on the tip accomplished that. So did trying to take as much as he could into his mouth, and whimpering at the rush of heat he felt between his legs when it hit the back of his throat. Was it allowed to start jerking yourself off while you did this? Emil had no idea,and threw himself into jerking and sucking the other man’s cock as vigorously as he could, gasping a little himself at the intensity of the effect it had on him. The man’s hand coming to Emil’s hair and gripping tight was unbearably hot, and Emil sighed out loud at the feeling of fingers on his skull. He was convinced he must be enjoying this way too much, but every embarrassing whimper and moan on his part just made the fondling hand in Emil’s hair more frantic. Slathering his tongue all over the head of it, Emil jerked the length of the man’s cock faster. The taste of pre-cum in his mouth was validating in a way he couldn’t name to himself. He couldn’t believe he’d been missing out on this for so long.  
  
After a little while, Emil did notice his jaw start to ache, but a quitter over temporary discomfort was not the person Emil knew he was. The man had started leaning back against the wall, slumping against the bench and moaning as he directed Emil’s head for him. When he gasped out the question of whether it was okay to push, Emil’s “please” felt pathetically breathless. There was no room for shame, though, when he’d never known his body to feel this way before. The ache in his jaw was pushed into the background as he frantically tried to keep sucking, the repetitive nudge of cock against tonsils making him whimper and gag. His eyes watered as he choked, and he could feel the tip of his cock slowly leaking out a mess of pre-cum into his pants.  
  
Emil had enough warning to brace himself when the man came, and didn’t think twice before gulping it down as it sprayed into his mouth. Swallowing the last spurt and pulling back, Emil knelt there panting for a moment. The man was also catching his breath, his hand still on the top of Emil’s head, the grip turning to an exhausted soft stroking. “Fucking hell.” He appeared to have been left rather dazed by Emil’s efforts. “You’re so - so enthusiastic.” Emil felt a giddy rush of pride as he watched the man take a few more deep breaths before continuing. “Gimme a moment, I’ll - you come here - ” Emil followed the signal to crawl back into his lap, beyond ready for whatever the man’s plan was in starting to undo Emil’s pants for him.  
  
From the entrance of the shower block, Emil heard the noise of a group approaching. The man he was sitting on took a hissing breath in. “Oh, shit. There was another unit out today.”  
  
Scrambling up, Emil stood back and let the man put his towel back on. The two of them hunted for their shirts in urgent silence, Emil smoothing down his hair and dabbing his mouth with a towel in a frantic effort to not look like someone who’d just blown a stranger in a bathroom. He couldn’t really blame the guy for instantly fleeing once he’d put his clothes on, and did pretty much the same himself, hurrying through to get whatever was left of dinner. As hungry as he was after the events of the day, Emil didn’t find himself very excited by the leftovers. While the threat of being walked in on again had cooled him down a little bit, he was still uncomfortably horny and desperate to do something about it.  
  
At least getting some food in his stomach steeled Emil enough to leave him considering a plan. While he’d never have been brave enough to do this yesterday evening, he now found himself seriously considering returning to the bunk he’d spent part of last night in. Lots of people were outside at the moment, and there was sort of a chance Didrik might be there alone again. Emil could plausibly convince himself that he was being sensible and acting on a well-formed plan, if he stopped by a bathroom to sort his butt out before he went on this horny quest. Once he’d done so and worked out which direction last night’s stopover had been in, he set off, trying very hard to focus on all the reasons this was a smart reaction to his predicament.  
  
Knocking, he found the room empty of everyone except one of Didrik’s roommates, in the middle of clearing a pile of laundry from his bed. The man in there was just as tall and beardy as Didrik had been, but with darker hair and skin, his eyes shiningly black in his face. In the state he was in, Emil couldn’t help but notice and appreciate the thickness and quantity of the hair on his arms.  
  
“Emil! Did you leave something else here last night?” The man’s affable ambivalence towards the circumstances they’d met in was reassuring. “By the way, Lasse.” He offered a hand, and Emil once again appreciated noticing the firmness of his grip.  
  
“Um.” Emil couldn’t really see a tactful way to phrase this. “I was looking for Didrik, actually.”  
  
“He won’t be here.” Lasse paused. “Also, he doesn’t tend to fuck many people more than once. Sorry if you had hopes there.”  
  
“Ah.” Emil wasn’t sure if this even disappointed him.  
  
“For what it’s worth, I think most of us think that’s a wasted opportunity in your case.” Lasse delivered the compliment matter-of-factly, with a nod of the head that made it seem like he thought such a statement was no big deal.  
  
Emil could see now that his original plan wouldn’t work at all. However, as Lasse bent to pair some socks, Emil couldn't help but notice again how extremely thick every part of this man was. He felt another burst of impulsive courage take control of his mouth. “Well, if you mean you liked what you saw…”  
  
Apparently the appearance of confidence was really all it took here. Emil returned to his peak of being heinously riled up within minutes. Last night’s lube was still lying around on the table, and Emil felt like he was taking some appropriately petty revenge for how he’d been kicked out when he took it without asking. Lasse was very happy to let Emil suck his cock hard then get on top of it, and however people were meant to do this, the enthusiastic way Emil rode it was getting the job done. Finally squeezing an orgasm out of himself, clenching hard around the shaft pounding him from below, was an ecstatic relief well worth the couple of extra minutes he spent riding Lasse to completion afterwards. Having got what he wanted, Emil managed to clear out before being discovered by the group again, and this time walking home with a load in his guts felt like winning. 


	6. Two For The Price Of One

Emil lay on his bed, letting his muscles recover after another long day of killing things in the hills. It had been almost two weeks since he’d arrived in Norway now, and he still wasn’t sure his plan was working.    
  
Enacting the plan was certainly a lot of fun, while it was happening. A few days after sucking him off in the showers, Emil had run into that man again when unthinkingly taking a place next to him at dinner. The stilted admission from both sides that they’d never properly introduced themselves - apparently his name was Yngve - had made Emil fear his confident act was going to crack, but it hadn’t stopped them managing to have a perfectly normal discussion about the state of the troll hunting season.   
  
It didn’t stop them walking through the camp for a while to continue their conversation either, nor did it stop them from admitting once out of everyone’s earshot that they wouldn’t mind a few repeats. Yngve seemed to be a fairly calm person, when he wasn’t having his load swallowed in semi-public places, and he was really quite considerate about it all. There was no reason for Emil not to sneak off and blow him again every chance he got, so that was exactly what he’d started doing. It was all very well and good in and of itself, but lying here with this fading piece of paper in his hands, Emil felt like he must be still doing it wrong somehow.    
  
He definitely hadn’t failed to put in the effort. Lasse apparently didn’t share his bunkmate’s inhibitions about fucking someone more than once, and even with the amount of time Emil was spending honing his dick-sucking skills on him and Yngve, the evenings here were surprisingly low-pressure. The official attitude of “work hard in the field, pitch in back at base, and then recover properly”  was taken by many to mean regular drinking, and Emil had joined in a couple of times already. His tactic of partaking in some liquid courage then parking himself in someone’s lap had proved surprisingly fruitful, so it could not be said that he was neglecting opportunity. Still, every time he looked at the date written on this slip of paper - just over a couple of weeks away, now - he couldn’t help but continue to feel the exact same tender wishfulness that he had when the slip of paper had been given to him.    
  
Shoving the piece of paper back onto the little shelf in his bunk, Emil let his arm flop down and sighed dramatically. Maybe, intense as his efforts had been, they were still lacking something. He’d have to try much harder, and soon, because the day he saw Lalli again was fast approaching. Right now, though, he had friends to visit. It was a minor miracle that Emil had managed to make any friends just for talking to, in between how busy he’d been, but it turned out the droll Icelandic man who’d introduced himself before all that drinking on the first day was actually really nice. Einar had introduced Emil to his boyfriend, too, another Icelander named Dagur who’d come out here with him. While his Norwegian was nowhere near as good, he seemed sweet. With his pile of strawberry-blond curls and strong jaw, he was easy on the eyes too. Emil felt quite awkward about the circumstance of finding both members of a couple really attractive. It was probably a bit rude to wonder this constantly how exclusive their attachment to each other was, and having no idea how one even approached that conversation, Emil had decided to never bring it up.    
  
The two of them were very nice to him. They’d managed to bag one of the few spots on this base that wasn’t a huge shared bunkroom, so going to talk to them meant getting to have fika at a table that wasn’t occupied by sixteen other people for once. Einar had explained how with his typical mild and hand-waving manner. “It’s not really a rank thing. This place was built up in so many stages there’s all sorts of buildings, so if you arrive as early in the season we did and stake it out - not that I would be enough of an ass to make Dagur go ahead by a week specifically to do that.” Einar’s regular bouts of light self-deprecation were one of the many times Emil couldn’t quite tell how serious he was being, but at least he seemed aware of the fact, going about life acting quite ambivalent to whether or not people could tell he was joking. Emil found it oddly appealing, and Dagur seemed deeply fond of it.     
  
Today’s conversation with them was much as it always was. Einar prodded at Emil’s ego constantly, but still made clear he was welcome to stay for as long as he liked. Emil had been a little taken aback a few times when getting to know him, taking a while to gel with his strange humour. When he’d first mentioned the mission he’d met Sigrun on, he hadn’t immediately been able to work out that Einar’s “How  _ terrible _ ! The Council will approve any bad idea these days!” was a serious expression of sympathy. He was getting there, though. When Emil came to visit today, he spent most of the time taking in the sight of the couple rolling their eyes at each other. Emil mentally took notes on the art of delivering a witty comeback. As entertaining as it was, it didn't make him less occupied with his pining today. Once again, he felt a bit pathetic when he finally excused himself and headed back to his own room, hearing the two of them switch back into Icelandic as he left.   
  
_ "Hvenær geri hann sér i ljós að okkur langar að hann gisti hjá okkur?" _   
  
_ "Brátt kemur það í ljós!" _ __  
__  
Returning to his bed, Emil found a note left on his pillow, signed by Yngve and informing him that there were a few nights this week when most of his bunkmates would be on some kind of overnight trip. Emil hoped all his own bunkmates hadn’t already seen it, because he was starting to feel like he was getting looks for coming home in the middle of the night so very often. Of course, he did know they had no leg to stand on, if they did happen to be judging him. In Emil’s opinion at least, it was much less intrusive than the baseline level of unwanted information you got in a bunkroom full of other men. Emil had spent too many nights in the military wondering why so many other men seemed to think you couldn’t hear them jerking off, or smell it when they hung their socks close to your bed, and it almost made him miss the Silent World. At least then, the sleeping and living situation had been enough of a mix of people to provide some moderating influence. However, even with the fact that Emil was definitely judging everyone else here first, being potentially thought of as weird remained something he wanted to avoid.    
  
Emil sighed at the situation and himself, then went through the days listed in the note. Yngve had mentioned a few times that he’d like to be able to “take his time” more than they had been. Emil still wasn’t sure if Yngve had yet worked out how fast Emil’s learning curve had been in the past couple of weeks, and still felt a bit like any encounter not limited by the threat of discovery might be enough to make it really obvious. Still, Yngve was right, it was getting both tiresome and just flat-out tiring, having to get it done as fast as possible in whatever corner was available. Maybe this was the part where the plan would start working.    



	7. Why Did It Have To Be Me?

When Emil arrived, to a bunkroom almost exactly like his own aside from its near-emptiness, Yngve had seemed at a bit of a loss. “I want to offer you something, but there’s really nothing in these rooms to do except sleep, or, well.”    
  
Emil hadn’t considered the idea that they might be there for anything except that “well”, and immediately felt a little bad about it. It wasn’t that Emil disliked talking to him, it was just that the tone of their interactions had been set pretty early on, and in some ways they still really didn’t know each other well at all. It almost felt weird to get a bed to do this on, and weirder to get into it without a rushed scramble. Clambering over to straddle Yngve felt a bit forced after he'd insisted on actually talking for a bit. Still, this did mean they could actually take all their clothes off. By the time Emil had let Yngve undress him, he had stopped thinking about how this might be awkward. When he noticed Yngve’s cock going from fattened to totally rigid at the noises Emil made when his nipples were pinched, he stopped thinking about anything at all.    
  
Emil almost went as directly for the cock as he had every other time so far, but even with the desperate state being pressed up on another naked man put him in, he tried his best to slow down like he’d been asked to. So far he’d never bothered paying much attention to the rest of someone’s body. Whenever he experimented, Emil spent every other moment convinced he was something tellingly weird, but this . Discovering the power he had to make Yngve shiver when he took the time to suck and lick his neck, Emil worked his way down from there. Hearing someone start the moaning before you even got to their crotch was good, actually.    
  
While the glistening tip of Yngve’s cock cried out to be sucked on again, Emil held back, biting his lip and parting Yngve’s thighs with a flat hand. His legs spread apart with an anticipatory hissing, and Emil took the chance to give his balls the attention he’d always wanted to. Yes, he’d learned already that fondling them while he took Yngve’s shaft into his mouth brought out some very exciting noises, but now he could lick them for as long as he wanted. Emil thought that maybe if he was careful, he might be able to get one into his mouth. When he tried it, sucking open-mouthed on one until it slid between his lips, the little wail he got in response made his free-bouncing cock throb so hard it felt like it must be visibly twitching.   
  
Emil let his tongue slip further down, digging into Yngve’s taint with a firm pressure. This time, Yngve was even louder, moaning Emil’s name with a quiet desperation. As Emil let his vigorous tongueing spread across the space between Yngve’s legs, Yngve grabbed one of his own thighs, pulling back and lifting his hips. Emil realised that he was headed in a very definite direction, one he was aware of in theory, but had never yet gone before. Yngve was propping himself up on his free elbow, breathing heavily and staring with eyes half-lidded at Emil’s face heading ever lower, and breathed heavily at Emil’s wide-eyed glance upwards.    
  
Emil was actually starting to feel like it was high time he was either sucking a cock or sitting on one, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d been surprised by enjoying something. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Pausing for a moment to consider his angle of attack, he licked his lips before diving in and sliding his tongue over Yngve’s hole. Yngve jerked at the attention of his probing tongue, and Emil felt his enthusiasm return as thighs wrapped around his head, making the blood rush in his ears. Having his hair grabbed and his head shoved deeper in was also good, but as Yngve encouraged him into working fingers inside and getting on top of him, Emil stopped being able to ignore where this was going. His motivation to even pretend to have done this before went as rapidly slack as sails in a changing wind.    
  
Yngve was so intensely worked up by the fingers probing him. He whined Emil’s name and clung to his hair, panting and reaching towards Emil’s cock as he clambered back up. The sweaty, shallow-breathed way he asked “Are you gonna fuck me?” made Emil feel kind of bad for his reaction, which was a long pause followed by an awkward cringe and sucking-in of breath.    
  
“Hmm, well.” Emil didn’t know what had come over him. Usually he was so good at pushing through some discomfort in pursuit of his goals, ignoring his burning thighs to keep riding someone’s cock, dismissing an aching jaw or slightly bruised-feeling tonsils. “That’s a question.” Unfortunately, if he was truly honest with himself, the concept of someone in this situation getting fucked and it not being him only made Emil think  _ ugh, do I have to? _ __  
__  
Yngve blinked, meeting Emil’s gaze, and the two of them stared at each other for a long moment.    
  
Emil sheepishly removed his fingers as Yngve closed his eyes, laying his hand over them in an obvious gesture of mild frustration. “You know, if you never top, you could have just said.”    
  
“Um.” Emil felt himself flush. He felt sure he must be someone who could top, if he really wanted to.    
  
“Really, it’s fine. I should have expected this, now I think about it.”   
  
“Hey!” What did he mean by that?   
  
“I guess it really is true what they say about Swedes.” Yngve said that last part as if mostly to himself.   
  
“I - ” Emil still hadn’t gotten around to asking Sigrun what exactly it was that everyone apparently said about Swedes, and made another mental note to find this out. He wanted so badly to rebut the conclusion Yngve had come to, but the fact of the matter was that the only way he’d be able to do that was by actually going through with topping him. There was only one realistic course of action. “I’m sorry?”    
  
“No! Don’t be, you don’t have to - just gimme a moment.”    
  
Yngve was, unlike Emil, able to turn himself around and start suggesting other things they might do. He had some ideas involving more of the tongue action he’d been enjoying earlier. That was how Emil discovered what it was like to have his face sat on. He quickly decided that all the awkwardness leading up to this decision was the most well-justified awkwardness of his life.    
  
Feeling the weight settle on his face, shoulders pinned down by Yngve’s thighs, filled Emil’s cock with tight heat faster than he’d ever expected. It made the fact Yngve wouldn’t let Emil touch it while he did this absolute torture. Even while Emil whimpered at being denied, the sound muffled by the cheeks he had to fight for air, this treatment only made the pressure in his cock ever more desperately tense. Whatever had caused that “I should have known” had also alerted Yngve to there being some easy buttons he could push with this, and it only got more obvious as they kept going. He clung white-knuckled to Yngve’s thighs while his face was ridden, barely able to breathe as he committed to deeper and more enthusiastic tongueing, legs scrabbling against the sheets as his whole body rocked into it. Yngve continued to jerk himself off at his own leisure, illustrating his good time by moaning freely and leaving Emil’s cock to twitch. The longer Emil spent pinned down and gasping for breath, the more ready he was to burst, but Yngve was in no hurry at all to stop savouring his obliging new seat. The fact it was so easy to do this to Emil felt honestly unfair.   
  
Emil squirmed and whined when Yngve finally came, the feeling of it hitting his chest and stomach the final straw. Yngve made no effort to clean it up, but got off Emil’s face and just batted his hands back, fondling his cock for him with aggravating slowness. It was no use trying to draw it out for very long though, not with how Emil had reacted to being pinned down. When Emil came, he could see it spatter amongst the white ropes already melting on his torso, coating him in a glaze of runny puddles. Emil was left lying there with his own spit smeared all over his face and two loads of cum on his belly. Reaching up to touch his sticky face and down to run a finger through the goo on his torso, he felt a dazed grin spread over his face. Now, that was more like it.    
  
“I should have asked if you like being tied up. It might have been more convenient.” Yngve’s idle musings, when he finally finished catching his breath and reached for a towel, made Emil a little wide-eyed considering them.    
  
This was the first time Emil had slept next to somebody in a while, and the first time it had involved this much naked contact. It was good, but he did wonder if everyone struggled so much to arrange themselves comfortably when they did this. Another thing he couldn’t help but think about was the last time he’d slept next to somebody. That had been much more cold, and clothed, and dangerous. Comparing curling up next to a fire with Lalli to this was dangerous, too. Emil tried really hard not to think about what it would be like if it had been Lalli in this situation, getting to fall asleep in the smell of his hair like he was doing with Yngve. He was about as good at forgetting that idea as he was at topping.    



	8. That's Me

Emil had doubled down on his efforts extremely hard for these past two weeks. It was getting to the point that he wasn’t sure there were even any more eligible men left on this base. When Didrik had tried it with him again, apparently softening his rule about sleeping with the same person twice, Emil had felt some small nagging sense that his instant enthusiasm was a bit desperate. However, he was definitely getting somewhere now. He’d long stopped even thinking about there being a reason behind his ever-accelerating rampage, and surely with the amount of fun Emil was having, something would be different when he saw Lalli again tomorrow. Emil was close to certain he’d sucked enough dicks by now for it to have worked.  
  
He did feel a familiar little jump in his heart when Sigrun sat down with him at breakfast and brought up the Finns arriving tomorrow, but maybe by now it was the normal amount you were meant to feel when your best friend arrived.   
  
Sigrun liked to come find Emil during random mealtimes. Her mini-lectures about the impressions she’d gotten of his work were mostly encouraging, usually also coming with a dose of advice blunt enough to keep him on his toes.   
  
“And I heard about that thing you did, with those mini-explosives. Honestly, I wish I’d seen it. It sounded epic.” Sigrun was speaking with her mouth half full, shoving even more eggs and bread in there the moment she’d finished her sentence.   
  
“With the wedging them into an open wound and letting the whole troll explode?” Emil had done a lot of things with mini-explosives, but he was pretty sure he knew which one she was talking about.   
  
“Yeah! Thinking fast, that’s my boy!” Sigrun wiped her mouth on her sleeve and looked thoughtful. “Now, what was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about? Oh, yeah! I heard about how slutty you’ve been since you got here.” Emil choked on his drink, and Sigrun casually thumped him on the back while continuing. “I just have to say, you know, I’m proud of you.”   
  
“Excuse me?” Emil could feel himself going a bit pink. He knew that by now there were too many people with direct experience of his activities for it to possibly remain at all secret, but Sigrun just flat out saying it was still a bit confronting.   
  
“Hey, I keep track of what the guys here are talking about, and I just wanted to tell you I’m impressed!” Sigrun seemed totally sincere. “From the sounds of it, I don’t think anyone on this base has gone through as many as you, maybe ever.” She made the pronouncement without skipping a beat, barely pausing before starting to lick her plate. Emil stared at his own food, feeling his light blush turn to a deep one.   
  
“Ever?” If Emil had heard two months ago that one day he’d be the most promiscuous soldier Dalsnes had ever known, he wouldn’t have believed it.   
  
“ _Ever_. You know, I always believed you’d be the best at whatever you set out to do.” Sigrun finished her food and started to stand up. “My little Viking! Make sure you go to the infirmary if anything starts itching!” She leaned in, bending down far to put her mouth near Emil's ear, lowering her volume very slightly to one now only a little above most people’s “outside” voice. “Or if anything goes green, or if it hurts when you pee - ”   
  
“Okay, Sigrun!” Emil was ready to take the intended compliment and move on from this conversation.   
  
“Seriously, shit gets all fucked up if you leave it for too long. Did I show you my syphilitic cow skull with the holes in it?”   
  
“You didn’t.”   
  
“Remind me to do that sometime, it’s real gross. That’s what happens if you get syphilis and don’t catch it early enough, your bones get all nubbly like a Rash skeleton - ”   
  
“Okay! I take the point!”   
  
“Not that you have to worry much here. Nothing going around that a shot won’t fix, unless you think herpes counts, which I don’t.” Sigrun concluded her information session with a friendly punch on the shoulder, pushing in her chair and turning to leave. “You get the afternoon off, right? Enjoy it, see you in the field tomorrow!”   
  
Emil started picking at his meal again, unsure what to make of these revelations. It was so difficult to choose between being absolutely mortified and genuinely touched by Sigrun’s take on his extracurricular activities. Looking around the hall, he wondered if literally every person here had a mental image of him as “the slutty Swedish one”. When he considered that the answer might be yes, he had to admit he kind of liked it. If nothing else, it meant everyone knew there were a lot of people here who thought he was attractive, and Emil couldn’t deny there was something in his nature that made that very exciting. He’d always wanted to be acknowledged by all as having the capacity for great things, and in a sense, his wish had been granted.   
  
Well, Sigrun was right, he had an afternoon off to enjoy once he’d finished the morning’s work. From what he recalled, Einar and Dagur were on much the same schedule as he was. He could do with some entertaining conversation, so perhaps later he’d pay them a visit. 


	9. Man In The Middle

Einar answered the door with the pretty, shiny hair Emil liked so much in an absolute mess.  
  
“Goodness. Hello, Emil.” Emil noticed once Einar had started talking that his shirt was inside-out. It seemed very obvious that he’d come at a bad time, and Dagur asking something that sounded like a “Who is it?” from inside convinced Emil that he was already in too much of a state to answer the door.  
  
“Oh, er.” Emil wasn’t sure what to do here. “Are you two busy?”  
  
“Well, yes.” Einar wasn’t the type to deny it.  
  
“Oh, wow, sorry. I guess this was a bad time, then.” Emil was on the brink of following that with an announcement that he was just going to leave, but the quirk of Einar’s eyebrow made him pause long enough to let the other man speak.  
  
“Unless you planned on joining in.”  
  
This wasn’t the first time Einar had made this kind of joke, his deadpan expression blurring Emil’s impression of how serious he was being just as well as it ever did. The way he held Emil’s gaze did linger, though, and in the light of this morning’s conversation Emil had to wonder. If absolutely everyone here knew what he was like, and this “joke” did keep coming up again and again, and he did sometimes take Einar to be joking when he wasn’t -  
  
Emil looked off to the side for a moment. He felt like he should try to follow with some plausibly deniable joke of his own, but his mind was as usual far too blank to even attempt being smooth. “Ah. Oh. Well then.” If it had been a joke, getting this obviously flustered wouldn’t look good.  
  
Einar’s slowly spreading grin, sing-song call of “Dagur, we have a _guest_ ”, and beckoning finger saved Emil from having to say it right there on the doorstep. As Emil entered their room, he felt a little unsure that he was really awake. He’d been idly staring at both of his friends individually for weeks, and the prospect of very suddenly getting to both of them at once was hard to process. He was so giddy with shock at this sudden development that the door clicking shut behind him made him jump a little.  
  
Despite the situation still seeming quite surreal, Emil’s response to the sight of Dagur all but naked on the bed was both familiar and immediate. Even if he didn’t know how to deal with this situation, apparently his cock did. The roundness of Dagur’s shoulder muscle and the slight pudge of his belly made Emil immediately think of how much fun he’d be to get on top of. His head wasn’t the only place covered in fluffy curls, with a generous chest spread trailing down his belly, a track Emil was sure he’d happily follow down all the way to the already half-hard cock he could see in Dagur’s pants. Einar also removing his crumpled shirt and dropping it on the floor gave Emil his first look at the body he’d been eyeing through clothes all this time, and his eyes immediately went to where his trousers hung low on pronounced hipbones, ready to be sucked on. Kicking off his shoes without further thought, Emil followed Einar to the bed, and let himself be directed to a spot in between the two of them.  
  
Dagur slipping a hand up Emil's shirt made it clear they weren't going to waste time messing around, and Emil took the cue, glad he'd long lost his old fears about looking too enthusiastic about people's body hair. Dagur just raised his eyebrows and grinned when Emil immediately went for the scruff between his nipples, digging his hands into it and diving in face-first to feel the texture of it on his cheeks and tongue. It was distracting enough that Emil had to really try to pay attention when Einar started asking him questions. Reacting predictably to the fistfuls of chest hair under his fingers, Emil was already sure he could have gone for anything either of the two of them suggested. Yes, he was very keen and ready to have things put inside him, and to suck the cock of nearly anyone who’d let him, and Dagur pulling his shirt off him then holding his arms back was very good, thanks. The way Emil was being restrained now was gentle, but when he squirmed he found it quite firm. He felt almost like some kind of specimen when Einar leaned in and precisely grabbed his cock, squeezing it lightly and grinning again when he found it already rock hard. “Oh, Emil, do you like being pulled around like that?”  
  
“Mm-hmm.” Emil could feel Dagur’s cock hard on his lower back, where he’d been pulled in close to his body. He still wasn’t quite sure what these two had planned for him. Being stuck between two people who were handling him like a beloved toy already had Emil feeling like he was made of melting butter, so he just bit his lip and whined when Dagur pulled his arms into a tighter restraint, holding him still while Einar pulled his pants off for him. Emil yelped when Einar bit his nipple, then moaned when Dagur nuzzled into his neck, applying a wet tongue and nibbling teeth from his earlobes to his collarbone. He had learned already that even though a bit of pain was good for him, not everyone had the skill to do it right. Einar did have it. It was so much to keep track of at once, one person holding him tight and gently riling him up like that, while another inflicted little jolts of pain that seemed to go directly to the tip of his cock. Emil just let them do it. He still couldn’t quite believe his luck.  
  
The two of them taking a break from paying attention to him, meeting in a sloppy kiss right next to Emil’s face, gave him a chance to stop moaning and catch his breath. It didn’t last, though, because now Einar was parting his legs for him. Emil felt like his nipples were tingling with the treatment they’d been given, and every little mark that had been left on his chest still throbbed. Dagur working an arm out of the tangle behind Emil’s back as Einar took out the lube made Emil gasp with anticipation. Einar’s smile as he spread lube across Dagur’s fingers was half affectionate, half smirk. He seemed to find it a little funny how completely gone Emil was already. Emil didn’t need to be told to relax, but shivered at Dagur’s breath on his neck as he told him to anyway. Even though Einar was probably going to tease him about it later, Emil sighed and let his head flop backwards across Dagur’s shoulder as two fingers slid into him. He was so lost in letting himself be loosened up that he almost didn’t notice when Einar lubed up his fingers too, reaching between Emil’s legs. “Three?”  
  
“Ah!” Emil bit his lip. “Yeah.” It was a bit strange feeling fingers enter him from two directions at once, and in between shallow breaths, he said so.  
  
“You don’t like it?” As he spoke Einar’s finger found Emil’s prostate and started delicately massaging it, making Emil writhe where he was being held.  
  
“I like it.” Emil’s response was almost a whisper.  
  
There was that grin again. Einar leaned in, still doing that little dance with his finger that made Emil’s toes curl. The extra motion of Dagur’s fingers continually easing in and out was still weird, but Emil could feel his belly tensing already from how well he was being stimulated. “If you feel like you can handle it, we could fit two cocks in there.”  
  
Emil made a noise that had no meaning in any human language, but indicated very clearly how he felt when he heard that. He didn’t know yet if he could handle it, but there was no chance he wasn’t going to try.  
  
Dagur’s hot-breathed whisper tickled Emil’s neck again. “You should tell us who you want in first.”  
  
“Uh.” Emil had no idea on what basis one decided that. “I think - uh - more fingers first.”  
  
“Well, yes.” Einar slipped another one inside Emil, turning his circles into a little running motion that made Emil moan again. “And while we’re stretching you out, here’s something for your hands.”  
  
Einar took out his fingers, eased off his own pants, and took one of Emil’s arms away from Dagur’s grip. Emil once again felt the bubbly thrill of grabbing a new cock for the first time, finally getting to see the face Einar made when the ripe head of it was rubbed. Dagur let Emil’s other arm loose, and repositioning a little, Emil grabbed his cock too. Now, he had a cock in each hand and four fingers gently pumping in and out of him, his own cock dripping wet enough for there to be a little string of precum left between when it touched his stomach. Once again, he could not believe his luck in life today.  
  
Maybe it wasn’t too embarrassing to admit he’d never tried two at once before. Emil clambered on top of Einar once he felt ready, wavering on his hands and knees above him. When he pushed down his pride and asked them to be gentle, the steady firmness of Dagur’s hands on his hips as he said “of course” was reassuring, but Emil still felt flickers of nerves as he sank onto the head of Einar’s cock and waited for Dagur to push into him from behind. One of Dagur’s hands came to Emil’s hair as two tips entered him, and Emil just went as limp as he could manage, letting his hair be stroked and sinking into Einar’s shoulder with a helpless moan as they both worked their way in up to the hilt.  
  
“I’m okay.” Emil volunteered it before they could ask, gasping for breath and overwhelmed but not at all lying. He buried his face in Einar’s hair, once again feeling like he’d started melting from the inside, and let two pairs of hands caress him. The slow buildup of moving back and forth on two at once made Emil shiver, and as he stretched to accommodate them both he began to throw his body back, taking them with more force and nearly out of his mind with the feeling of it.  
  
Emil could barely even keep track of what the two men surrounding him were doing. He could feel them intermittently fondling his cock, never for long enough to get him too close yet, and the moans he was letting out with every slide backwards were louder when someone’s lips or teeth found his flesh. Being stretched like this was a whole act in itself, and one Emil was happy to let totally overwhelm his senses. When someone finally spoke again, it felt like Emil had been doing this forever. Einar was saying he was nearly there, and Dagur was leaning past Emil’s head to kiss him again. Emil felt like the muscles inside him were coiling into an ever-tighter spring, and had to gasp at Einar to stop touching his cock. He couldn't handle this if he'd already gone. The slow build of new little cramps and flutters in his body now was like the burn of liquor turning to warmth.  
  
Having a load shot into him, then being pulled to the side to continue with just one inside him, was a decidedly strange. Feeling Dagur pick up the pace and start jerking him off was what finally got Emil to the edge. He grabbed at Einar's shoulder, pulling him over so he could sink his face into someone while he came, whimpering into Einar's sweaty upper arm as he jerked then went limp and blank. During his hazy return to earth, he felt cum shoot into him for the second time in a few minutes, and Dagur pulling out. It was over. Emil had done it. It felt like he’d been hollowed out and tenderised.  
  
If Einar and Dagur had kicked him out now, Emil didn’t know if he would have been able to handle it. When he asked if he needed to leave, Einar just kissed his forehead and told him not to be silly, and Dagur put a friendly arm around his cum-streaked belly to hold him where he was. Emil let himself be pressed back against a warm chest, shivering again when the back of his neck was nuzzled. Getting to stay for the rest of the evening made feeling this thoroughly done actually very nice.


	10. SOS

Emil had woken up between his two friends and immediately remembered the events of the day before. The only reason the combination of memories and naked flesh next to him didn’t make him hard was because he was already sporting raging morning wood as it was. Dagur was apparently not averse to being prodded with it, taking Emil’s hand and placing it on his own hard morning cock, and Einar woke up to the sight of Emil finally getting to follow Dagur’s happy trail downwards. Having Einar grab his head to direct how he serviced Dagur was exactly the right way to leave Emil even more compromised by sucking cock than usual. Apparently Einar really enjoyed using Emil’s head on his boyfriend like that, because when Emil crawled up again to press against him, it only took a few minutes of jerking their cocks together in his hand for them both to get off. When Emil finally left their room, it was with a smile on his face and a spring in his step.  
  
Heading through the base, Emil hurried towards breakfast, hoping he could get something besides cum in his stomach before his day of work. Passing the gates, he heard voices drifting in the air and stopped immediately as he recognised them. There was no sound in the world he could mistake for that of people speaking Finnish, and the simple joy of the morning so far transformed abruptly into a horrible, complicated mix that felt like his heart was attempting acrobatics without a warm-up.  
  
Backing up, Emil poked his head around the gate. There Lalli was, seeming to contemplate some invisible object in midair as he so often did, his cousin Onni also in tow and gesturing stiffly as he talked. Emil wasn’t sure Lalli was listening to it, and it also seemed that he hadn’t seen Emil yet. Having spent the last month emotionally running from Lalli, Emil reacted to the sight of him arriving by immediately raising his arm and calling for him.  
  
“Lalli! Hey, it’s me, remember how we were going to meet when you got here?” Emil jogged over as he spoke, the enthusiasm impossible to keep out of his voice.  
  
Lalli turned, his eyes widening at the sight of Emil’s approach. When Emil came to a stop in front of him, he began what sounded like a “Hey”, then snapped his mouth shut. Starting again, he looked as directly at Emil’s face as he ever did with anybody’s, paused, then pronounced an over-proper “Good day” with the closest thing to a convincing Swedish accent Emil had yet heard from him. Lalli could not have known that the way he followed it, looking off to the side in frustration for a moment before a halting “You talk - talk _ed_ \- fast. Say it again”, would destroy Emil as efficiently as it did. That only made Emil’s sudden need to find a pillow to scream into even worse.  
  
“I, um. I’m here. We were going to meet up. I guess you knew that.” Now that he had to repeat himself, Emil was even more keenly aware of how his first instinct had been to babble.  
  
Lalli looked confused. “What are you trying to tell me?” That phrase came out a lot more smoothly, all at once, and Emil could guess he’d been using it as a ready-made formula more than most others.  
  
“It’s good to see you.” Emil still couldn’t work out if he wanted to grab Lalli and hug him, or to be himself grabbed by some kind of airborne troll and eaten so he could stop thinking about how he’d already bounded up like a desperate puppy.  
  
Lalli’s expression softened so subtly anyone who hadn’t paid rapt attention to him for months would probably have missed it. “Yes. Good to meet.” His head cocked slightly to the side. “Emil, your hairs.”  
  
Emil was briefly confused by the non-sequitur, but the explanation came quickly when Lalli stepped up close to him and began flattening the hair that was still horribly messed up on the back of his head. The hair that had gotten messed up when he’d sucked someone off for breakfast. Those flying trolls were welcome to invent themselves and come find him any moment now.  
  
Regardless of how Emil’s hair had gotten that way, he had missed the way Lalli did this. Lalli’s delicate cheekbones standing out just that tiny bit more as he sucked his cheeks in with concentration, and his bright gaze intensifying as he got on his tiptoes to lean around making sure he’d caught all of the flyaways, were things Emil tried to ignore. He got the sense, when Lalli fell back down onto his heels and patted his fringe down, that they’d now properly greeted each other. No, wait - Lalli was in nowhere near the same state, but there was always a bit of mess to tidy up there. As Emil finished his work, he heard someone clear his throat, and became quite abruptly conscious of the fact Onni had been stood there for the entire time he and Lalli had been preening each other.  
  
Emil was sure he remembered that Onni had been going around Sweden relying totally on Icelandic, and it was unlikely he’d changed tack in the month since they’d met. He raised his hand, trying to convince himself that the aura of judgement he felt emanating from the elder Hotakainen was all in his head. “Hi.” Feeling his stomach twang, Emil remembered what he’d been on his way to do before getting distracted, and that inviting others to do it would be a really good and normal place to steer the conversation. Addressing Lalli, he asked “Do you two need breakfast?”  
  
Lalli squinted for a moment, then turned to Onni. _“Haluuks sä mennä aamiaiselle?”_  
   
_“Juu.”_ Onni picked up the one bag he and Lalli had between the two of them and looked at Emil expectantly. Well, that was probably a yes then.  
  
As Emil tried to ask after their journey during the rush through breakfast, he realised that Lalli was still struggling almost as hard to express himself in Swedish as he had been when they’d parted, but he seemed to catch far more of what Emil said to him. He’d clearly been putting in some effort to make their friendship work, and Emil’s response was a strange sense of guilt, before he remembered that he had also been doing his best all month to make their friendship work. Getting Lalli fed and telling him where he could go to find a room filled Emil with the same fuzzy feeling that looking after him always did, and it was impossible to repress a little smile when their parting involved Lalli solemnly tapping his knuckles against Emil's upper arm. Having to sprint to get to the assembly point on time barely felt like several minutes' running, when his chest was so full of such tingly bubbles of happiness. During roll-call, the high of having seen Lalli again finally faded, and Emil remembered that being this happy about them meeting was meant to be a bad thing. It still wasn't working, and Emil had to wonder now if there was any hope for him at all. 


	11. Voulez-Vous

“So, yeah, _that’s_ how I’m doing.” Emil concluded his lengthy explanation of the problem with a long and dramatic sigh, flopping down on the chair opposite Sigrun’s bed with another noise of despair for good measure. He’d been waiting for the chance for this chat since the Finns arrived three weeks ago, but had only found the gap in his and Sigrun’s schedules today.  
  
Sigrun was still sitting on her bed, holding the pockmarked cow skull she’d pulled out from under it when Emil had arrived. “Oh. Could you not just tell him, though?”  
  
“ _Absolutely not!_ What if he thinks I’m weird? We have that second mission we’re all going on in the autumn, and his cousin is coming too, and if Lalli hates me then his cousin will hate me as well and they’ll stand there talking about how weird I am in Finnish all day and the whole mission will be _ruined_ \- ”  
  
“You could try seeing if he actually thinks you’re weird first, before you think of all the consequences for it.” Sigrun seemed rather impatient. Emil knew he must be a nightmare to deal with when he was being like this, and tried to dial it back a notch.  
  
“I’ve just tried so hard to get over it already.” Trying to express himself plainly made it even more awkward to finally be saying all this. “You know, I tried to follow the usual advice and put in such an effort doing it, and it hasn’t made me stop being in - you know - being attracted to him.”  
  
Sigrun looked confused. “What advice?”  
  
“You know, that you should get over someone by getting “under” someone.” Emil was sure she must have heard it just as often as he had.  
  
“Who the fuck told you that would work?” Sigrun narrowed her eyes. “Wait, you didn’t go and fuck like twenty dudes in your first month here just because of that, did you? I assumed you were just enjoying yourself.”  
  
“I mean, I _was,_ but - ”  
  
“Good! Anyway, that’s the dumbest advice I ever heard, sorry pal.” She knit her eyebrows together. “I really thought it was just you being, well, you know what they say about the Swedish. Whatever, Lalli’s been looking at you like the sun shines out of your butt for months, stop being a dweeb and go have a conversation with him. I _know_ you’ve been hanging out together all the time, there’s nobody else he’d be picking up that hick Swedish from. Are you ready to look at my skull yet?”  
  
Emil was kind of disappointed that Sigrun clearly didn’t understand the situation with Lalli at all, and decided he was above clarifying that actually, the pure _dalmål_ of his mountain home was far more normal Swedish than whatever weird blended dialect they spoke in the capital. "Yes, the skull is very nice."  
  
“No, it isn’t! It’s gross as hell, come look closer.” Emil scooted his chair over and examined the syphilitic cow skull.  
  
“You’re right, that’s extremely gross.”  
  
“Cool though, right?”  
  
“Are you going to tell me why you own a disease-mangled cow skull?”  
  
“Not today. I tell the story better when I’m drunk.” Sigrun underhanded the skull back into the space beneath her bed. It landed with a slightly crunchy thud. “Look, Emil, just try to take difficult things one at a time. You’re way better at it than you used to be, you just gotta apply it to more things than killing trolls.”  
  
Emil sighed. “Okay, yeah. Thanks.” He guessed he would never get any advice from Sigrun other than tackling the problem in as head-on a way as possible. Of course she would tell him to apply lessons from battle to life in general. As he left her room, he realised he still had no idea what it was that everyone apparently said about the Swedish.  
  
Maybe he needed to stop trying to explain the situation to other people at all. Emil had tried to correct people many times when they had made assumptions about him and Lalli, purely based on the fact that they’d spent all possible time together since they’d been reunited. Emil knew it looked a certain way when Lalli would just take Emil’s jacket to nap under, or alert him with a pat on the knee that he needed his shoulder as a pillow too. The hours Lalli spent on Emil’s bunk were just for practising his Swedish, though, and if he occasionally couldn’t be bothered going back to his own room to sleep then that was just yet another show of trust and affection Emil would never have dreamed of overstepping.  
  
He didn’t even take Lalli up on it when he made his regular offers to have Emil over to the room he and Onni had been sharing. Onni was out so often, and while Emil was of course perfectly capable of interacting with Lalli like a normal person, he’d rather not inflict the experience on himself. Hours of being hyper-conscious of the fact they were alone together just wouldn’t have been nice. Emil thought it wiser to wait until he was handling this better.  
  
When Yngve had asked if Emil wasn’t going to be meeting up with him anymore, it had been impossible to convince even him there was nothing going on.  
  
“Not that you seem the type to get with someone who would mind you sleeping around, but you do seem really into each other, and I just thought I’d ask - ”  
  
“He’s not interested in me!” Emil really tried to correct people calmly when this came up, but this had been the fourth time in as many days. “He’s just being friendly, alright?”  
  
“He’s like this with everyone?”  
  
“Well, no, he doesn’t even like talking to most other people.”  
  
“Right.” Yngve had looked at Emil as if slightly worried about his mental state.  
  
“Look, am I sucking your dick or not?” Emil didn’t know why he couldn’t even go out for a good time these days without being attacked.  
  
The memory of that conversation still irked him. If only everyone else would understand that the depth of his and Lalli’s friendship was exactly the problem. Neither of them had ever known this kind of bond with someone else, and that was why Emil was obliged to never, ever admit he also wanted to ride Lalli until his hips disintegrated.  
  
Emil’s thoughtful walk took him through the base, still pondering other things Sigrun had said. He had to admit she was right, and the advice he’d been acting on had been utterly ineffectual. Perhaps there really was nothing to do but accept that he’d be dealing with this for the foreseeable future. At least this terrible solution had been fun to attempt. If nothing else, he'd more or less acquired a new hobby and would genuinely miss this base when he had to leave it.  
  
Passing through the walkway near to Didrik and Lasse’s room, Emil paused. It had been a few days since he’d visited either of them, and he could do with some distraction right now. Knocking on the door, he heard Lasse’s voice telling him to come in, but on entering did not find him alone. Not only was Didrik there, but their four other bunkmates were lounging in various states of evening undress, sitting up to peer at the visitor. One or two waved at him, no doubt recognising him from the night almost two months ago when they’d all met.  
  
“Hm, perhaps not a good time, Emil.” Lasse still didn’t look displeased to see his face.  
  
“Or maybe it’s a fine time.” Didrik was mostly joking, but Emil did see two of the men on the bunks catch each other’s eye, raising eyebrows at each other.  
  
Emil really thought, for almost ten whole seconds, about leaving and going through the effort of finding distraction elsewhere. This was an awful lot of people. Sigrun’s advice was at least useful here, though. Most difficult situations could be handled if you just took care of things one at a time. 


	12. Knowing Me, Knowing You

“I can’t _believe_ you got through all six of them.” Einar was sitting with Emil’s legs laid over his lap, the two men arranged on the bed at right angles. “You’re terrible.”  
  
“It’s funny that I did not know Dalsnes was getting an uh, what do you call it in Norwegian, Einar?” Dagur was stood by their little kitchenette, making breakfast in his pants and gesturing in a way that totally failed to bring any specific word to mind. “Where you wait by the road in Reykjavik, and then - oh, yes. Public transport system.”  
  
“Rude.” Emil let his arm fall down, hanging off the side of the bed. He couldn’t be bothered to form much of a response. It had been three days since that particular incident, and he still felt a little wrecked from the exertion. Thinking about it afterwards, he wasn’t even sure why he’d decided to take on that particular challenge. If he’d asked his aunt, she’d probably have said something very wise-sounding about needing to prove to himself that he had fun doing this kind of thing even once he’d accepted there was no outside reason to be doing it. Emil thought it was likely this hypothetical internal Siv voice had some kind of point, but that the main explanation was probably even simpler than that, and had more to do with such a man smörgåsbord just being inherently difficult to turn down. Well, if there was a point, he'd proven it.  
  
“Does your Finnish boyfriend know you’re this much of a local celebrity?” Einar added insult to injury by pulling at a poorly-executed bit of darning on Emil’s sock.  
  
“Okay, that actually is rude.”  
  
“I’m going to keep bringing it up until you accept he wants your dick, Emil.” Einar was not giving up with this. He claimed this treatment was because he cared, which was infuriating.  
  
Emil knew exactly how this conversation would end up going if he tried to fight it again. There was no point letting it devolve again into yet another “is not”-“is too” style situation.  
  
As he left Einar and Dagur’s room again, Emil wondered if there was any way to stop the constant pestering about this the two of them were giving him. Both of them had insisted again and again that they promised to drop it if he ever convinced them he’d actually tried talking to Lalli about it. Emil had tried to explain that it wasn’t just normal nervousness, that what he had with Lalli was a special bond forged by learning they’d walk through hell for each other, and Einar had just rolled his eyes at the melodrama before saying “Bet you still wouldn’t top for him though”. Emil had sputtered with indignance and been plagued for the rest of the day with mental images he’d been trying to repress for months. It wasn’t right to think about how he would be with Lalli, in the impossible event of his attraction actually being reciprocated. Just for the record, Emil decided, if he absolutely had to he would strongly consider it. Now that was a sign he was beyond lost to this crush.  
  
Today was not the time to return to such thoughts, though. Emil would be out of the field today, helping move in a huge quantity of explosives that was coming from Iceland. He didn’t think of himself as the most reliable safety hand when it came to these things, but Sigrun was right that he’d had to deal with more of them already than a lot of the hunters. Some of the liquid explosives and accelerants were both uncommon and somewhat volatile. While they had clearly survived the sea journey intact, even Emil did think to worry about the state they might be in after the road up here, the potholes there a lot less predictable than the rolling of one of the massive goods ships.  
  
The shipment was huge, and moving everything was going to take most of the morning. Cats flocked in droves towards the piles of boxes accumulating in corners, getting underfoot everywhere, and people were constantly poking their heads in to look at all the shiny new equipment they were going to get to use on trolls. It was a disaster waiting to happen, and happen it did. Emil was standing on his tiptoes to slide a heavy box onto a shelf above his head, unbalanced by the strain, when one of the many cats in there twisted around his ankles. Tipping back, Emil managed to catch the box again, but not smoothly enough to stop one of the many containers of fluid inside from smashing. His heel falling onto the cat’s tail sent it speeding off with a yowl, glancing against a small vial of nitroglycerine as it fled from the pain. The spark from it exploding rapidly escalated into setting the entire array of things in front of Emil on fire, including most of his accelerant-splashed clothes.  
  
Emil took in the flames for a couple of seconds, stunned by how quickly everything had lit up, then his brain caught up enough for him to react.  
  
“Aiyeee!” He let out the most undignified non-sexual noise he had made in a long time, dropping the box and turning to run out the door. Almost as soon as he’d stepped outside, his outer layers continuing to rapidly kindle despite their alleged flameproofing, he heard the cat still yowling in terror. By the time he’d run back in to get the cat, his trousers were on fire as well, and he could hear people outside starting to yell for buckets and the fire hose. Stumbling out and tossing the cat from his arms, he began to roll on the ground and strip, the light shirt he had on underneath already beginning to smoulder and his skin stinging. Emil was frantically trying to get off his boots, cursing the fact his flaming trousers were well tucked into them, when he felt an icy blast of water coming from the side.  
  
Struggling to his feet and turning to see who his saviour was, he was greeted by the sight of Lalli standing there, bracing himself against the force of the water as he blasted Emil with the fire hose. Lalli was nothing but thorough, soaking Emil’s thin shirt totally and spraying him from head to toe. By the time he was sure Emil was no longer on fire, it had gone on for almost a full minute, and Emil was panting in shock from the cold by the time Lalli turned off the faucet.  
  
Emil felt nearly outside himself as his body reacted to the adrenaline and cold, and really wished he could blame that full-body shock for what was happening now. Unfortunately, if he was honest with himself, it was only his mind being in the gutter that made this situation produce the effect it did. As the sounds of the building’s fire being put out clattered behind him, he hoped desperately that his trousers being this wet didn’t make them more revealing, because this was the worst-timed erection possible.  
  
Even standing there, flushed and panting with exertion while straddling a dripping hosepipe, Lalli looked ethereally beautiful enough to fit his role as today’s guardian angel. Right now, Emil could believe Lalli had never had an awkward boner in his life, making his own sorry state all the more embarrassing. Lalli stared wide-eyed at Emil's shivering, wet-shirt-plastered torso and bit his lip in what must have been concern, or perhaps just worry at the absolute state Emil was in yet again. The look Emil was giving him was probably making him uncomfortable somehow, because now he was quietly clearing his throat, shifting his weight and tugging his jacket down in a gesture of obvious awkwardness.  
  
“Thanks.” Emil came back to the situation enough to start stamping on his own still-smouldering jacket, hoping there was enough of it left to mend.  
  
“Mmm.” Lalli was as averse to pleasantries as ever. Emil looked behind him and saw that the other fire hoses had done their job. Loading probably wouldn’t be starting again for a while, but there was a lot to clean up.  
  
“Seriously, I would have gotten horribly burned without you turning up. That was good timing.” Even if Emil’s filthy mind was making him respond to this totally inappropriately, he could at least act decently.  
  
“Oh. Yes.” Lalli still looked like he wanted to leave, and Emil could hear himself being called back to work. He knew Lalli struggled a lot more with conversation when there was a crowd, so could convince himself part of the curtness was just difficulty discerning Swedish over all the people yelling as they arrived on the scene. Still, when they parted and Emil’s hands got busy cleaning up the mess he’d partly caused, he continued to feel like he was doing something wrong. Lalli had been seeming disappointed more and more often lately, especially when Emil declined the offer to spend time alone together yet again. It was a horrible feeling, to appreciate him so much and yet be letting him down, knowing full well that socialising in crowds was much less fun for him. Emil decided that especially after today, he owed it to Lalli to at least try giving him some one-on-one time. 


	13. Waterloo

Emil entered the room Lalli and Onni had been sleeping in, glancing around and finding it to be extremely spare. “Where can I put these down?” He’d brought some things with him to help Lalli practise his Swedish some more, so he had a sure distraction from the overanalysis and guilt when Lalli started his usual casual touching.  
  
“Put to any place.” Lalli was shutting the door behind Emil, locking it despite the fact few people on this base even seemed to have locks, much less use them.  
  
“Won't that make it harder for Onni to get back in if he comes back?” Emil wondered if this behaviour was a Finnish thing he hadn’t yet noticed, and put his pile of papers down near where he’d taken off his shoes.  
  
“I hope so.” Lalli looked thoughtfully at the bolt he’d slid to, then pulled over the one chair in the room as well, bracing it against the door to form a barrier.  
  
“But he lives here too.” Emil was clearly missing something. He regretted putting down his defensive pile of papers when Lalli finished whatever he was doing, turned and approached him, touching his cheek in the way he usually only did when they were saying goodbye for a while. Lalli getting close enough for Emil to notice their slight height difference was always terrible. If they’d kissed, Emil would have had to tilt his head up and be leaned down onto, just the tiniest of amounts. It was the worst knowledge, and now Lalli’s fingers had made it even more terrible by brushing over Emil’s lower lip while Lalli stared, close and intense. “Uh, is there something on my mouth?”  
  
“No”, said Lalli, before leaning in and turning the answer to that question into “yes”.  
  
Emil really hadn’t put much thought into whether Lalli would be a good kisser. It turned out he absolutely was not. Emil's brain slowly ticked over the fact that he knew what kind of kisser Lalli was, because they were kissing. That was Lalli's tongue, trying to smash its way between his teeth. Oh.  
  
“Ah - ” Despite the inept way his face was being chewed on, Emil’s palms were already sweaty when he pulled back, his heart hammering as he placed his fingertips on Lalli’s lips. “Wait.”  
  
Lalli’s face rarely showed fear, but Emil was sure that was the tightening around his eyes meant. He'd acted on his _I don't need to ask, I observe and draw accurate conclusions_ , and Emil's reaction was making him think he’d made a terrible mistake. The quiet horror in Lalli's voice confirmed it. “Oh. I was wrong.”  
  
“No, no no - ” Emil’s hands moved to cup Lalli’s jaw, hearing himself speak as if from a distance. Even if he couldn't quite believe what was going on, trying to alleviate the fear was a matter of instinct. “Just, more like - uh.” He lifted his heels off the floor the fraction he needed to wrap his arms over Lalli's shoulders, parting his lips ever so slightly as he pressed their mouths together. Lalli stiffened, his hands finding Emil’s waist and grabbing, then relaxed again as Emil pulled him in and started to demonstrate that tongues were not meant to battle for dominance in this situation. The way Lalli’s fingertips dug in as Emil’s thumb traced down his neck, and the gasp when Emil followed that trail to Lalli’s collarbone with a little line of sucking kisses, made it very clear that he agreed this was better. With his fingers nested in the hair at the back of Lalli’s neck and his lips continuing on the sensitive dip of his collarbones, Emil’s mind-blank panic began to fade, allowing him to form coherent thoughts. He managed to get through _wow, I’m really stupid_ before Lalli let out a tiny moan, his fingers gripping hard enough to hurt and short-circuiting Emil’s brain once again.  
  
Lalli biting people when he was riled up apparently didn't only apply to fights, and Emil took being gnawed on with gasps of delight. It still didn't quite prepare Emil for the first feeling of sharp nails once Lalli's hands got inside his shirt, and he hissed and yelped at the pain. Lalli paused again and stood stock still, holding his breath. “I hurt you.”  
  
Pressed tightly against Lalli’s body, senses full of his heat and scent, Emil could feel the sting of welts forming on his spine. “Ah, yeah.” Lalli’s hand was brushing lightly against the raised-up lines, making Emil’s breath catch and his cock start throbbing. “Do it again.” When Lalli took a hissing breath in and repeated his action, drawing a nail down Emil’s back harder and more deliberately, Emil went limp against his shoulder and moaned. It took all of a minute of this for Emil to want to get face-down on the nearest surface and let Lalli do whatever he wanted.  
  
Lalli didn’t know what he was doing. His hands were everywhere, jabbing and groping. Even as they stumbled the few steps towards Lalli’s bed, Emil was reminded again and again that despite the scrabbling enthusiasm, Lalli was throwing himself into what seemed like unknown territory with every movement. As Lalli backed Emil onto the bed, placing his hand on Emil’s chest and pushing lightly to get him down on it, Emil fought past his heavy breathing to speak. “Lalli you - you don’t have to do this all at once.”  
  
Lalli paused in the action of trying to remove Emil’s shirt. “You don’t want?”  
  
“Oh, I do want to, but you - ” Emil gasped as Lalli finished wrestling his shirt off him, tossing it to the side then immediately sliding his hand down to grab at Emil’s erection. “Ah! You can slow down!” He wasn’t doing a very good job of acting on his words, pulling Lalli on top of him and trying to get his shirt off in turn. Lalli shimmied out of it and threw that on the floor as well, pressing his mouth to Emil’s for another lip-biting kiss and continuing his scratching in a line that glanced over Emil’s nipple, making Emil arch and whimper as he scrambled to wrap his legs around Lalli’s waist. Feeling Lalli’s cock hot and rigid against his own crotch was something Emil had spent months not even daring to think about. Now it was here, he could only try to maneuver Lalli into the action of it, grinding against him with hands on his hips.  
  
Emil realised with a noise of wretched frustration that Lalli couldn’t fuck him now. He wanted nothing more than to wrap himself around Lalli, guide his fumbling attempts in until he could envelop every sensitive millimeter of that cock, and hold Lalli in tight while he discovered for the first time the feeling of Emil moaning and clenching under him. The thought that he might want that too was still so fresh and raw. Lalli biting harder now, sinking his teeth into Emil’s shoulder and digging fingernails in deeper at the resulting wail, made it so much worse. Emil could not have anticipated needing to bring lube, but he still mentally kicked himself with enough force to break a door.  
  
Lalli releasing the bite left a little ring of pressurised marks where Emil's skin throbbed. After denying to himself for this long that Lalli could be having sexual thoughts of any kind, seeing him react like this to every one of Emil’s masochistic gasps was an utter shock. Head swimming, Emil scrabbled to get both of their pants off. “Ah, not there!” Lalli had once again grabbed as soon as he saw, and nails digging into the shaft of his cock made Emil’s eyes water. Lalli’s hand sprung free, and Emil caught his breath, finally looking down to see Lalli hard for the first time. When he reached down, taking it tentatively in his hand, Emil had to close his eyes for a moment to savour the texture of it. It was already glistening at the tip, rigid and hot in Emil's hand. “Lalli, can I - do you want me to use my mouth?”  
  
“To your mouth?” Lalli's breathing was already a little short at the feeling of Emil starting to squeeze his cock, the nails sticking into Emil’s chest starting to draw blood as he gripped harder. “I think so.” The fact he sounded a little surprised was another thing that made Emil sure Lalli had never done this before. Having one of those odd moments now, the ones where Emil noticed Lalli was more vulnerable than he ever admitted to being, made his breath feel a little absent too. Lalli was so naked against him. That had been true before, so many times, but his brain finally catching up to the precise way it was true now made Emil feel like his emotional composure had crumpled on the floor with their clothes.  
  
"Emil?" Lalli sounded a bit worried. Emil must have frozen up.  
  
"You think you'd like me to suck you off." Emil tried not to sound too breathless at the idea.  
  
"Yeah." Lalli closed his eyes when he nodded, not moving from his place on top of Emil. Emil kept massaging Lalli’s cock, pushing him up just enough to slide down underneath his body, sucking on Lalli’s belly as he went and feeling his face form the most ridiculous expression of giddy joy at the shivers he got back. It was a little awkward going this far down on such a small bed, but Emil had been balancing all kinds of acts on these things for months now. The noise Lalli made when Emil’s hand cupped his balls was almost a whimper.  
  
“Lalli? Are you okay?”  
  
“Mmm-hmm.” Lalli's fingers were going back to Emil’s hair as his mouth found its way towards his cock, and Emil could hear the tension in his shallow breaths. When Emil caught the string of precum oozing down on his tongue, following it up to take the tip between his lips, the grip of Lalli’s fingers clenched tight and Emil felt him thrust in so far and hard he choked. If Emil hadn’t spent the last two months beating his gag reflex into submission, it would have ended terribly. Lalli pulled away when he heard the noise Emil made, gasping again, and Emil grabbed his hips to hold him back. Rolling Lalli over, Emil kept up the grip on his hips, looking up to find Lalli wide-eyed and flushed. Once again, he looked like he was starting to think he'd made another horrible presumption, or hurt Emil in a way he didn't like.  
  
“Don’t stop. It’s okay.” Emil usually tried to be sparing with how often and how hard he let people fuck his throat. While he felt pretty accomplished about how much he’d learned to take, there were limits that if surpassed, would make it hurt to swallow the next day. Totally disregarding those, Emil took Lalli’s hands and arranged them on his head, showing where they could press down. Lalli’s wide-eyed look turned into eyes fluttering shut as Emil lowered his head again. The expression Lalli made as Emil took his cock all the way in, keeping his eyes trained upwards to see the sweet validation, was the best thing he’d ever seen. Emil felt fingers tighten in his hair and closed his own eyes, letting his head be held down and moved in the rhythm Lalli liked. Lalli carrying on like this had a good chance of making Emil wince during his next meal, and he’d already decided it was worth it. Emil intended on giving the best and most dedicated blowjob of his life.  
  
Lalli let Emil rise up when he tried to, and a hand came out of Emil’s hair when his tongue worked the head of Lalli’s cock. Lalli needed it to cover his mouth as he lost his composure, arching and trying to stifle a loud moan. Emil relished the noises he pulled out with the flick of his tongue against the delicate string, then gently took Lalli's hands back and placed them again in his own hair. The next time, Emil stayed down for so long his head swam with lack of air. The slight struggle to keep going made Emil's cock so uncomfortably hard, even Lalli's bedsheets on it were near-torturous. Emil licked the whole length of Lalli's cock again, let his head be shoved down and his throat thrust into, pulled tight lips over the head of it and sucked every drop of pre-cum with relish. Lalli just stared at the treatment his cock was being given in utter shock, breathing in little gasps that got rapidly shallower and more frequent. Before too long he was taking a long, shuddering breath that told Emil his reward was coming. Emil didn't know how to handle hearing Lalli finish, then getting to feel, taste and swallow the result. Lalli’s hand went limp in Emil’s hair, and Emil could only wipe off his mouth and stare in utter joy at how blown away he looked.  
  
Lalli didn’t seem capable of remembering words right now, but sat up a little, reaching out and touching the tears that had streaked down Emil’s cheeks when gagging had made his eyes water.  
  
Emil wiped his face. “It’s okay, it’s good.” Lalli looked confused. Emil wasn’t sure he wanted to tell Lalli that not everyone was quite so rough with his throat, because in that moment he felt like Lalli was welcome to do that to him every day. “It can happen.” Trying to move up next to Lalli, Emil found him cringing at contact and clearly overwhelmed. He pulled back, placing himself down carefully next to Lalli and just taking in the sight of how drained and limp he was. The urge to press against him was so strong, especially with how Emil's cock was aching for contact now, but Emil would rather have cut off a finger than interrupted the slightly cross-eyed daze Lalli was lying in. He must have spent several minutes taking it in before Lalli spoke.  
  
“I will do it too.” Lalli had recovered a little, but looked far from actually ready.  
  
“You don’t need to.” Emil grabbed his own cock. Lalli looked worried again, and Emil massaged himself with deliberate slowness. “I’ll do it myself.” That drew in a sharp breath from Lalli as he looked down at the motion of Emil’s hand, eyes darting quickly between Emil’s face and crotch, lips parting in the way they did when he was thinking through some phrasing.  
  
“You will show me how it looks like.” He sounded breathless again, and not just with the afterglow of having his cock sucked.  
  
Emil also sat up and leaned back, hissing as the contact with the wall made him remember the welts on his back. He had intended to just deal with himself while Lalli enjoyed his own afterglow, but Lalli was still staring at him touching himself with intense interest. When he saw Emil’s hand pull all the way to the tip and press out a bead of pre-cum, he looked like he was momentarily forgetting to breathe. Emil held it there for a moment, then experimentally took the liquid onto his finger and sucked it off, watching Lalli’s face for his reaction. Lalli was still clearly tired out, so the wide-eyed intake of breath at Emil licking his middle finger clean was gratifying beyond belief.  
  
Emil shifted up against the wall, rearranging his legs to give Lalli the best view of his cock. On some level, he could barely believe himself for thinking a display was welcome. People had asked to watch him do things before, and he’d mostly obliged, but the idea of Lalli being attracted enough to him to want to watch this was still surely to too good to be true. Emil traced the welts Lalli had left on his chest, though, letting himself gasp openly as he pressed the bruises and tiny bloody specks left in rings by Lalli’s teeth. Revisiting the marks Lalli had left made him feel like he had only a few minutes of this in him. Licking his fingers and rubbing the wet tips on his own nipples, he tried to be as slow with his cock as possible, letting Lalli have enough of a show to remember. Emil's hair had fallen all over his face. The validating feeling of looking through that mess of hair at Lalli's raptly attentive expression, slowly drawing his hand up again and again, was indeed too much to handle for long. Lalli must have gotten over his post-orgasm aversion to touch, because as Emil came he could feel Lalli's hand on his thigh and once again gripping tightly. Emil didn't stop himself from moaning as he pumped cum all over his own hand.  
  
“Was that good?” Licking cum off his fingers and still barely in the same room, Emil turned to Lalli, hoping it was what he’d wanted to see. The expression on Lalli’s face made Emil feel briefly like the answer was an unequivocal yes. In the next moment, though, the wave of post-orgasm and post-pain tiredness hit him. It immediately seemed more plausible that Lalli’s look of shock was because all this had been some kind of terrible mistake. Emil took a deep breath. “Lalli?”  
  
“Mm?”  
  
“Please tell me if that was good.”  
  
Lalli nodded, looking confused. Emil tried touching him again, hoping the desperate grab for comfort was welcome. “Lalli, can I - ”  
  
Lalli let Emil curl against his shoulder, and after many long breaths inhaling the scent of Lalli’s hair, Emil found the words to ask more specifically and get answers that made sense. Yes, Lalli had enjoyed it, yes he wanted to do it again, yes he’d wanted to do it for quite some time now. Once he'd heard it all, Emil felt like he was possibly one of the densest people on earth. Swallowing mid-sentence while he tried to explain how little he’d expected this, Emil felt the twinge in his throat. Now that Lalli was holding him and idly playing with his hair, remembering the top-notch blowjob he'd just given brought up a real glow of pride. It felt a little rude to clarify whether or not this was the first time Lalli had done something like this, but on learning he’d been right to assume it was, Emil felt even more pleased with himself for doing the job he had. Someone had to look after Lalli properly sometimes.  
  
It had always been easy to get lost in being cuddly with Lalli. Emil wasn't sure how much time was passing. Idle kissing was so nice, and after a while, Emil felt like there was something else he should ask.  
  
"Lalli?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
Emil paused, wondering how to phrase it. It probably wasn't too desperate to say this now. "So, does that hand squeezing my butt mean that you'd like to go again, or - "  
  
The two of them sat up in shock when they heard it, the chair sitting against the doorknob clattering. The door shook as the lock thwarted attempts to enter, and Onni's voice came from outside.  
  
_“Mitä helvettiä, Lalli?”_ Onni tried the door a second time, and it was loose enough in its frame to thud back and forth against the bolt as he pushed.  
  
_“Ai saatana - hetkinen!”_ Lalli was a faster dresser than Emil was, and despite Emil’s squeaks of protest, was in his trousers and opening the door before Emil could finish doing his fly up. There was absolutely no way Onni did not know what he’d walked in on, even if the room hadn’t smelled slightly of sweat and cum and Emil hadn't been visibly covered in bloody scratches. Emil trying to look friendly definitely did not come off the right way, because Onni responded to his broad grin with a look that spoke of his soul ascending from his body out of pure disbelieving awkwardness. In this moment, having no common language with Onni might just have been a blessing.


	14. Bang-A-Boomerang

Very soon after they’d started sleeping together, it had seemed like a good idea to talk to Lalli about the amount of other men Emil was also seeing. Emil had worked himself up into a ridiculous state before the conversation. Despite the fact there was no real reason for Lalli to be upset about it, Emil's brain latched onto the outside chance he might be, and Lalli’s reaction at first indeed made it seem like something was terribly wrong. The confusion and annoyance had been so obvious that waiting while Lalli’s struggled to express his opinion on it had filled Emil with utter panic. When he had finally realised that Lalli’s sole complaint was that Emil had never offered to let him _see_ any of it, the relief that had flooded him was indescribable.  
  
Remembering a few seconds afterwards how he’d felt the first time he’d had to put on a display for Lalli, the relief had turned quickly into being very, very excited. Lalli was a special kind of wonderful and good.  
  
Einar had laughed at Emil for several minutes when he’d finally asked if they’d be willing to let Lalli watch them put things in him. The longest part of the deliberations over it was the mocking Emil for how long he’d taken, and once he and Dagur were done with that, the answer had essentially been a shrug and a “sounds fun”. Emil suspected, based on how hard they went when it actually happened, that half of the fun was getting to show Emil up as someone who was easily turned into an absolute mess. Lalli had seemed extremely calm the whole time, straddling a chair with his head and arms casually resting on the back as he watched, taking it all in with a slightly wide-eyed expression that was otherwise impossible to read. As they finally left together, Lalli was quiet for long enough to make Emil once again anxious about what he was thinking. When he eventually spoke, though, it was just to observe that he had not known a person could make that much noise, or that you could fit so much of your hand inside someone. Realising what Lalli meant when he said he would “remember it to himself later” made Emil feel like something in his life was going very right.  
  
Sigrun had found out eventually, and Emil had endured yet another round of laughter at his expense. When he had tried to turn it into a more businesslike conversation, assuring her that this wouldn’t affect team dynamics, she had hooted even more loudly in her mirth. “Oh, good to hear, how would we deal with you and Lalli mooning over each other all the time? How will it work if you two follow each other around all day, worrying about each other too much?” It had all been quite uncalled for. The way Sigrun talked about it, crooning “your _boyfriend_ ” over and over while Emil clarified it was more that they were inseparable friends who happened to be extremely attracted to each other, made Emil wonder if he would ever be free of people who felt the need to torment him.  
  
“Yeah so, if he’s always the one you run home to tell about how much you got put up your butt that day, just so you can suck off the hard-on it gives him, I’m pretty sure that makes him your boyfriend.” Emil had not asked Einar, nor would he have said that was quite what was going on here, and really anyone who'd seen the state of Emil's back and shoulders should have known better than to make Lalli sound that passive about anything. He also wasn’t sure that was most people’s definition of “who your boyfriend is”, but regardless of anyone’s definition of anything, the way Lalli treated him made him perfectly sure their tender feelings were mutual. What they had between them, and what they'd hopefully continue to have for a long time after they departed together in the autumn, was best described as _good_.  
  
The train was nearly empty at this time of day, and there was enough space for Lalli to stretch out on the seat beside Emil, using his thigh as a pillowcase. The members of the team that had reconvened after the summer had taken a while to notice the difference when Lalli did things like this, which Emil decided did not necessarily validate Sigrun’s earlier point. Emil could have done with a nap himself. The final night on the Dalsnes base had involved Sigrun calling for everyone to drink to her luck upon departure. Despite the party being technically in her honour, she had left it several times after promising to show various other well-built women the neat cow skull under her bed, although was sure to make up for the break in her drinking upon every return. Emil had left the party during one of her breaks and not seen her until the next morning. His own send-off from Dalsnes had been extremely tiring, as a lot of people had wanted to say goodbye. Well, it was nice to know you’d been appreciated.  
  
Emil pointedly did not take his fingers out of Lalli’s hair as everyone returned from the lunch cart. He was not going to be made fun of for anything. Those who were large and Danish, and chose to come out of their catchup-gossip session with Sigrun full of plausibly deniable smirking comments about "those who have had greatness thrust upon them this summer", could be like that if they wanted. Reynir making an audible “aww!” coupled with the same hand motions one would make at a small animal had been worse and harder to ignore for its earnestness, but Emil had learned a lot of things about himself this summer, and most of them had involved becoming less easily embarrassed. Eventually, he was sure he'd even be able to look Onni in the eye again.  
  
Maybe it was just the exhaustion making him sentimental, but he was quite sure he would miss Norway a lot. Norway, and Dagur, and Einar. And Yngve with his insistence that Emil somehow let him know he'd survived the next mission, and Lasse, and Didrik, or parts of him anyway. And Karl, and Pelle, and Leif, and Kjetil, and Magnus, and Magnus’s untalkative but well-endowed roommate, and Hallvard, and all the rest. Well, there were new adventures ahead. After this new mission they would need to present their findings in Reykjavik. Emil had always heard Icelanders were a friendly bunch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who read this far! I did not expect this to end up being 23k but it's just somehow very easy to write Emil as having this kind of adventure. Hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it.


End file.
